Whether it's a shape, a structure or a work of art, once you see a meaning in something, there's no going back. The reasons why run deep
THE concept of chance as we understand it today emerged long after the birth of philosophy. The ancient Greeks distinguished between events which were inevitable and those which were seen as the will of a god. The idea that there could be events which were neither inevitable nor intentional is a difficult and abstract one which, with contributions from Cicero, the 1st century BC Roman philosopher, poet and statesman, has progressively gained strength as modern science has developed.
Even today, the assertion that a particular phenomenon is "random" is neither trivial nor obvious and, except in textbook cases, is the subject of debate. For example, after French biologist Jacques Monod wrote in his 1971 book Chance and Necessity that genetic mutations were due ...
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