Randomness

Only recently have the meanings of the word "random" coalesced around science and statistics. Its history is littered with obsolete meanings. The degree of elevation of a gun that maximizes its range. The direction of a metallic vein in a mine. The sloping board on the top of a compositor's frame where newly arranged pages are stored before printing. These particular randoms kill opponents, create wealth, or incubate books. The RND command in 10 PRINT selects one of two graphical characters -- a kind of textual composition that recalls the latter meaning of random. Flip or flop, a slash forward or backward. 10 PRINT splays each random figure across the screen with the PRINT command, another echo of the printing press, and a legacy of the early days of BASIC, when PRINT literally meant putting ink on paper. The connections of RND on the Commodore 64 to the origins of the word -- to speed, violence, devastation, and yes, printing -- are inescapable.

Only recently have the meanings of the word "random" coalesced around science and statistics. Its history is littered with obsolete meanings. The degree of elevation of a gun that maximizes its range. The direction of a metallic vein in a mine. The sloping board on the top of a compositor's frame where newly arranged pages are stored before printing. These particular randoms kill opponents, create wealth, or incubate books. The RND command in 10 PRINT selects one of two graphical characters -- a kind of textual composition that recalls the latter meaning of random. Flip or flop, a slash forward or backward. 10 PRINT splays each random figure across the screen with the PRINT command, another echo of the printing press, and a legacy of the early days of BASIC, when PRINT literally meant putting ink on paper. The connections of RND on the Commodore 64 to the origins of the word -- to speed, violence, devastation, and yes, printing -- are inescapable.

Life itself is full of randomness and the inexplicable, and it is no small wonder that children and adults alike incorporate chance into their daily lives, as if to tame it. Games of chance are one of the four fundamental categories of games that all humans play, argued the French cultural historian Roger Caillois. Whereas ''agon'' are games dependent upon skill, ''mimicry'' are games of imagination, ''ilinx'' are games causing disorder and loss of control, ''alea'' are games of chance. Taken from the Latin name for dice games, ''alea'' "negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications" (17). When a player loses a game of chance, it is as if the gods themselves have cursed him or her. But when a player wins a game of chance, he or she has been blessed by the fates. Indeed, the roll of a die or toss of a coin have long foretold the fortunes of men, though gambling dens and casino halls have determined more futures than soothsayers and prophets. The rise of the scientific method can be seen as one enduring struggle to impose a more rational -- and predictable -- view upon the world. From Aristotle to Galileo to Newton, classical mechanics defined the universe as an organized system without random actions. Although Einstein may have declared that "God does not play dice with the universe," probability and statistics have been extremely important to our understanding of the world from the 20th century on, and have brought randomness into our basic scientific understanding of the world. From chaos theory and quantum mechanics through evolutionary biology and the simulation of dynamic systems, randomness may itself be modeled and incorporated into systems, but it can no longer be excluded from the scientific perspective on the world.

Life itself is full of randomness and the inexplicable, and it is no small wonder that children and adults alike incorporate chance into their daily lives, as if to tame it. Games of chance are one of the four fundamental categories of games that all humans play, argued the French cultural historian Roger Caillois. Whereas ''agon'' are games dependent upon skill, ''mimicry'' are games of imagination, ''ilinx'' are games causing disorder and loss of control, ''alea'' are games of chance. Taken from the Latin name for dice games, ''alea'' "negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications" (17). When a player loses a game of chance, it is as if the gods themselves have cursed him or her. But when a player wins a game of chance, he or she has been blessed by the fates. Indeed, the roll of a die or toss of a coin have long foretold the fortunes of men, though gambling dens and casino halls have determined more futures than soothsayers and prophets. The rise of the scientific method can be seen as one enduring struggle to impose a more rational -- and predictable -- view upon the world. From Aristotle to Galileo to Newton, classical mechanics defined the universe as an organized system without random actions. Although Einstein may have declared that "God does not play dice with the universe," probability and statistics have been extremely important to our understanding of the world from the 20th century on, and have brought randomness into our basic scientific understanding of the world. From chaos theory and quantum mechanics through evolutionary biology and the simulation of dynamic systems, randomness may itself be modeled and incorporated into systems, but it can no longer be excluded from the scientific perspective on the world.