Randomness vs Order

zork

zork

2,500+ Posts
Randomness vs Order in the Universe or just on Earth, at the most basic level can they not co-exist? I'm talking about the destiny of all things with the original questiion.

If it is all randomness what are the origins of the laws of physics, why would there be constants? If there is order in some things or principles, at whatever level, what is it about those things that allow order and not other things?

Take the 'normal distribution' of , well, you name it. The old bell curve that is. Why does it seem to occur in so many observable, measureable things over and over if you use proper statistics to measure populations of many XYZ.

Where does order come from in your opinion?

I'll hang up and listen. Please attempt some seriousness.
 
whoa, I was on a mystical roll last night with that stream of thought.
smile.gif
 
Howard Johnson used to always credit Nietzsche for saying that out of Chaos comes Order.

But, then again, Howard Johnson can blow it out his ***.
 
Coel
Interesting question. My view, there is what we call order there to observe, we impose a human interpretation upon that. We assign a meaning to that interpretation.

It seems your question is a version of does reality exist independent of our observations. I'm a realist, I hold it does, but there cannot be "proof", just all the evidence.
 
forgot to mention yesterday, there was a well known prof at UT, Ilya Prigogine, that did work on 'dissapative structures' and self-organizing systems. I know really nothing about this, but he was also into thermodynamics and this stuff tied into entropy and so forth.
The Link

he wrote some popular books, but i haven't read them
 
I think the question takes us back to Plato’s idea of the forms – to the principles of intelligibility that allow us to distinguish one thing from another. Form implies order, and order implies purpose. This was Plato’s assumption, and it’s an assumption I agree with. The form of a horse, of a man, of justice, of love – all these imply a purpose of being. We say that a horse is a good horse (a well-ordered horse) if it is able to do well the things that horses are characteristically about the business of doing.

But chaos has no positive means of intelligibility. That is, we may only recognize it by what it is not. The Greek sense of khaos was associated with “an abyss, that which gapes wide open, is vast and empty.” Emptiness, the abyss, that which gapes. All point to something that lacks material existence. I think this Greek sense of chaos is instructive. It is not intelligible on its own terms. It can only be known by that which it is not, or by that which it is set in opposition to. As an example, chaos is why “Goth” kids dress the way they do. The Goth vibe does not assert a positive identity in the ontological sense. Instead, it rejects order and the purpose that order implies. It thereby abandons all responsibility for living life according to any purpose. The Goth vibe does not propose to be for anything; it defines itself by what it's in opposition to: order, purpose, intelligibility.

Perhaps order is merely the concentration of purpose in the Universe. Where we perceive the Universe to lack purpose, we invoke the term chaos to describe this lacking. To me, order is the rule of the Universe. But because not everything can be equal (or perhaps obviously equal) in its order, we use chaos as a necessary descriptor.

But chaos fascinates us. It's a dangerous word, and danger is compelling. We all watch the high-speed chases, and the horror movies, and the coverage of the Steve McNair fiasco. It casts a spell that can be difficult to break. As Nietzsche said, "Look long into the abyss, and the abyss looks into you."

Perhaps we all find what we're looking for. If so, then that, too, is a sort of debt that chaos pays to order.
 
Coel
Couple of thoughts on your last post.

My view is that Plato's forms fall in the camp of human perception, interpretation, and meaning. Of course these are responding to an objective order in things, but I don't see where purpose comes from except thruough human interpretation. Surely people differ on this point. and I don't mean to preach.

The second point is that order and chaos are closely related aspects of a single sense or ordering... again, a human perception and interpretation thing. I recently finised a little book by Bloch on a mathmatical treatment of Borges Library of Babel story. One outcome demonstrated is that the maximally disordered set is a product of organization... an alogorithm. A strange outcome. Cheers.
 
Randomness and order both constantly occur. However, randomness keeps happening until with the perfect set of circumstances, it creates order. Then, for the particular event, order continues in perpetuity.
 
NBMisha:

When we speak of order, there is a sense in which what we’re really discussing is the observation of difference—the difference between one part of a system and another part of that same system. A heart has many functionally differentiated parts: the aorta, the ventricles, the atriums, veins, the pulmonary and brachiocephalic trunks, etc. And all of these functionally differentiated parts contribute to the system of the heart. And the heart itself—let’s say the heart of a horse—is in this same way a functionally differentiated component of the larger system of the horse. And the horse, in turn, might be said to be a functionally differentiated part of many different systems, such as a herd of mustangs, or a war chariot, or a cattle drive, or the animal kingdom itself.

A world that is intelligible must also be a world that is ordered—that is to say, it must be a world in which functionally differentiated parts contribute to a larger system. This is not, to my way of thinking, a product of human conception, but rather it is an object of human perception. It is, to borrow your language from above, the objective order to which our perceptual faculties respond. These relationships between part and whole, between lower systems and higher systems, are the way of the natural world. And this is why I suggest that we do not impose order, but that we observe it instead.

And here is where purpose might be found to be a distinct thing from function. If we say that function is the activity that is to be done, then purpose is the reason for which the activity is necessary in the first place. Function is never its own cause for being; it is only meaningful when it is useful to the higher system. This is the nature of purpose. The function of the heart, for instance, might be to squeeze fluid, but it’s purpose is to deliver oxygen to the different parts of the body so that our horse might continue to live. To whatever degree the part is useful or meaningful to the whole, it has a purpose.

So when we speak of randomness, we speak of things that, according to our limited perceptions, have no obvious place within a known system. Their function (activity) may be identifiable, but it is unclear to us how that function serves the purpose of a larger system.

And when we speak of chaos, we speak of things that are not functionally differentiated. They may exist within a known system, but no function is discernible. Or, if a function is discernible, then it is found to be in opposition to the well-being of the larger system. In fact, it may be said that the nature of chaos is dysfunction—the disruption of the functionally differentiated, ordered system.
 
I'd like an example of how order produces disorder,, please.

( i realize I set up really easy jokes here- especially aggy ones- I don't mind, but feel free to add the real answer too.)
 
I'm not sure I want to say that order produces disorder. Rather, I'd say that disorder can only exist within the context of a larger system of order.
 
Coe,

i must admit i'm not real clear on this discussion. The idea of purpose has a teleological implication. I am sympathetic to this, but really don't think it's very useful. Besides, i was thinking this thread was about the idea of randomness, chaos in the scientific sense, and also how order can arise in natural systems.
 
Chaos exists within orderly systems. Sometimes what appears to be chaos is following immutable principles that we havent discerned.

Its hard to really think of a chaotic event that doesnt eventually run into physical laws or observed human behavior or some potentially explainable framework. Even if we dont know yet what that is.

At the granular level its random. Step back and you begin to see some order.

Oh, and puff puff pass.
 
Thread still going, cool.

Coel, there's one thing you asserted that I wouldn't support, and that is "order implies purpose". I guess I'm speaking from a mathmatical concept of order, in which purpose has no role. I suppose I would say, "not necessarily".

And I did assert that math proofs exist that the maximally disordered set may be produced algorithmically. This says it can be compressed. How is that disorder, if it can be compressed?

I think I need to think thru a definition of disorder that is coherent with both set theory and information theory, and the second law while we're at it. Rather, someone else needs to think this thru. I think I'll have a beer.
 
See Stuart Kauffman, "At Home in the Universe"
I confirmed some of his ideas such as, from randomness comes order. The model is simple. Take random numbers in pairs (n to the 2nd pwr) to a sample size of your liking. The higher the finer the result. Compare each pair to the previous samplings, combine matches into new sets and so forth. Plot the results size of largest set over number of samples taken. The graph will always be sigmoidal in nature. The slope of the curve will always go almost vertical at the point between .5 and 1.0 ratio of the two factors mentioned.

It is a great tool to simply explain the explosion of life on our planet during the Cambrian Explosion 575 MYA.

Insert into the model, simple molecules, slowly combining with other simple structures into the more complex, and so forth, until ....boom....we have life. It is inevitable and all from randomness!
 
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