About the history of randomness:
"In ancient history, the concepts of chance and randomness were intertwined with that of fate. Many ancient peoples threw dice to determine fate, and this later evolved into games of chance. Most ancient cultures used various methods of divination to attempt to circumvent randomness and fate.
The Chinese were perhaps the earliest people to formalize odds and chance 3,000 years ago. The Greek philosophers discussed randomness at length, but only in non-quantitative forms. It was only in the sixteenth century that Italian mathematicians began to formalize the odds associated with various games of chance. The invention of the calculus had a positive impact on the formal study of randomness. In the 1888 edition of his book The Logic of Chance John Venn wrote a chapter on "The conception of randomness" which included his view of the randomness of the digits of the number Pi by using them to construct a random walk in two dimensions.
The early part of the twentieth century saw a rapid growth in the formal analysis of randomness, as various approaches for a mathematical foundations of probability were introduced. In the mid to late twentieth century ideas of algorithmic information theory introduced new dimensions to the field via the concept of algorithmic randomness.
Although randomness had often been viewed as an obstacle and a nuisance for many centuries, in the twentieth century computer scientists began to realize that the deliberate introduction of randomness into computations can be an effective tool for designing better algorithms. In some cases such randomized algorithms outperform the best deterministic methods."
This extract implies that randomness has been a part of our world for a very long time. People have learnt to accept randomness and there are many uses for it now.
About Quantum Mechanics:
"According to several standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, microscopic phenomena are objectively random. That is, in an experiment where all causally relevant parameters are controlled, there will still be some aspects of the outcome which vary randomly. An example of such an experiment is placing a single unstable atom in a controlled environment; it cannot be predicted how long it will take for the atom to decay; only the probability of decay within a given time can be calculated. Thus, quantum mechanics does not specify the outcome of individual experiments but only the probabilities. Hidden variable theories are inconsistent with the view that nature contains irreducible randomness: such theories posit that in the processes that appear random, properties with a certain statistical distribution are somehow at work "behind the scenes" determining the outcome in each case."
About Religion:
"Some theologians have attempted to resolve the apparent contradiction between an omniscient deity, or a first cause, and free will using randomness. Discordians have a strong belief in randomness and unpredictability. Buddhist philosophy states that any event is the result of previous events (karma), and as such, there is no such thing as a random event or a first event.
Martin Luther, the forefather of Protestantism, believed that there was nothing random based on his understanding of the Bible. As an outcome of his understanding of randomness, he strongly felt that free will was limited to low-level decision making by humans. Therefore, when someone sins against another, decision making is only limited to how one responds, preferably through forgiveness and loving actions. He believed, based on Biblical scripture, that humans cannot will themselves faith, salvation, sanctification, or other gifts from God. Additionally, the best people could do, according to his understanding, was not sin, but they fall short, and free will cannot achieve this objective. Thus, in his view, absolute free will and unbounded randomness are severely limited to the point that behaviors may even be patterned or ordered and not random. This is a point emphasized by the field of behavioral psychology."
While searchng through Google, I can across a film called "Chaos Theory".
This may be a useful film to watch. I read some summaries about the film and it doesn't seem extremely relevant to my project, but perhaps I could watch it if I have the time.
I emailed the maths and physics graduates that my supervisor introduced me to:
"Thanks.
Hi everyone.
First question: Do you think that one day, with enough research, we will be able to confidently predict a random event (for example, the rolling of a dice)?
Also: Do you believe that pure randomness exists? It can be argued that randomness doesn't exists because it is subjective - something that may seem random to one person may seem like an obvious pattern to others. On the other hand, there are some mathematical (and physics related) concepts such as chaos and quantum theory, that show that randomness is very much a part of our world?
To conclude, I would just like your opinions on the subject of randomness and any suggestions for books or certain topics that may be useful to me.
Thanks,
Zainab Kwaw-Swanzy"
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