Abstract
In recent years we have seen a growth of interest in the concept of randomness among philosophers and mathematicians. Particularly interesting has been the development of new connections between the concept of computational complexity and the idea of the degree of randomness of a sequence as connected with the complexity of the simplest program capable of generating that sequence (Chaitan, 1975).
Article Note
Many of the perspectives in this paper are reflections of views which are now common among evolutionary biologists. I have only differed, and perhaps erred, by advocating their more general applicability to scientific and epistemological matters. In any case, I have been fortunate over the years for frequent discussions with Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Donald Campbell and Ross Kiester which have contributed to these formulations of, and extrapolations upon their ideas. Discussion with Daniel Goodman, David McCauley, Abner Shimony, Herbert Simon, and Elliot Sober have also been particularly useful. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, #SOC78-07310 Research.
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Wimsatt, W.C. (1982). Randomness and Perceived-Randomness in Evolutionary Biology. In: Saarinen, E. (eds) Conceptual Issues in Ecology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7796-9_12
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