Ancient fresco of dice
players in Pompei
A science
experiment that has baffled physicists can be done at home. Fill a jar with an equal
number of tiny beads in two contrasting colors. It might be thought that enough
shaking of the jar will cause an even distribution throughout, so that if the
beads are black and white the jar will come to look uniformly grey. This does
not happen: instead the beads stubbornly continue to appear in streaks of the
same color. When first introduced to this phenomena, some scientists were so
suspicious that they expected to find some electromagnetic effect. In the end
everybody agreed it must be a demonstration of how randomness tends to generate
patterns. [1]
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. At the same time, most ancient cultures used
various methods of divination to attempt to circumvent randomness and fate. Over
3,000 years ago, the problems concerned with the tossing of several coins were
considered in the I Ching, one of the oldest Chinese mathematical texts, that
probably dates to 1150 BC.
[1] Cosmic
Loom; Dennis Elwell
Comments
Post a Comment