[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your wonderful essay-posts, dearest sister in Christ!

It seems to me the entire universe is evolving. The fact of evolution seems pretty clear to me. But the devil's in the details, as they say. I have no confidence in a theory of evolution that is premised on a random process, or as Jacques Monod put it, "on pure, blind chance." For I think there is abundant evidence that there are guides to the system at work. But this is the very thing that Darwin's Dogma rejects in principle.

I very strongly agree.

One cannot say something is random in the system when he does not know what the system "is."

And the number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable. Thus, when the term random (which is a math term) is used in the sciences it actually means "unpredictable."

I see no justification for the existence of the term "random" in the Dogma of Darwin.

[betty boop]

One cannot say something is random in the system when he does not know what the system "is." ... And the number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable. Thus, when the term random (which is a math term) is used in the sciences it actually means "unpredictable."

Indeed. Consider the case of Brownian motion. For some reason, it is convenient for people to think that this phenomenon is a demonstration of "random behavior." The term refers to the observable "jiggles" of a material particle suspended in a liquid or gas. Multiply that one particle by a seemingly almost-infinite many others comprising the system under study, and then you notice you have a problem: One cannot simultaneously account for the causal behavior of each particle comprising an incalculably many-N system on the basis of direct (and simultaneous) observation. All we know is that particles are "mass-y" objects; and thus have both gravitational and inertial properties. That is, they can affect each other, both "actively" and "passively." So, given the seeming endless complications pertaining to an even quite simple system, what one has to do is invoke stochastic methods just in order to make the problem tractable.

But just because we are forced into stochastic methods — e.g., combinatorial, Bayesean, etc. statistical formalisms — doesn't mean that we are entitled to forget that the behavior of individual particles in the system obey causal laws. And because they do, it seems to me we are not entitled to say that their behavior, either individually or in the collective, is "random."

It only looks so, to us, as observers, largely because of a limitation of human mental capabilities. We need statistical science in such cases because otherwise we could not form an impression of what we are observing.

And so, at times, we find that statistics is our friend.... It's kind of like a crutch that we sometimes need to support our native intellectual lameness.

If I might put it that way. JMHO FWIW

It's very clear to me that the invocation of stochastic methods does not necessarily imply "randomness" in the system under study.

And so, I totally agree with you, dearest sister in Christ, that there is no justification for "the existence of the term 'random' in the Dogma of Darwin."