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Sahitya P.'s picture

thoughts on Ways of Making Sense of the World

After reading “Ways of Making Sense of the World” what I got from the article was that the third approach “non-deterministic emergence” has certain advantages as a paradigm because it offers a useful outlook on disorganization/randomness which the first approach “primal patterns” and second approach “deterministic emergence” do not.  By  defining randomness as noise which obscures underlying patterns  or  viewing it merely as a surprising outcome of deterministic processes,  I think we are limiting the importance randomness has in the way we view the world. Non-deterministic emergence, which takes into account the idea that “randomness is inherent” rather than “a byproduct of a deterministic system,” is significant because it implies that randomness is an important starting element.  Since randomness allows for the generation of more possibilities it seems to me that it would offer greater scope in exploration as the article suggests.  This view of “randomness yielding possibilities/ patterns” is not so surprising at least in terms of evolution since random mutations that arise in a population generate change and allow for evolution to occur. If as the article states “randomness can produce any kind of order one might be interested in” what determines what order/patterns are produced?  If there are an infinite number of possibilities why do we see the patterns we see in our world? Is there a tendency toward stable forms / patterns?

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