Randomness is the only rule?

Book review of the Drunkard’s Walk: how randomness rules our lives

For me, the definition of a good book is that it inspires me to read more books on a subject, instead of making me feel that I’ve learned all I want to know. The Drunkard’s Walk: How randomness rules our lives definitely fits this definition.

There are ten chapters in this book, and author Leonard Mlodinow tackles  mathematics and logic first, then statistics, and ends up with psychology. Meanwhile physics, especially astrophysics is woven into every chapter. The book is full of surprises even for a person who loves these topics, because Mlodinow connects them in such a fluid and smart way.

Even though I’ve read many other books about philosophy, physics, mathematics and logic reading this book was exciting because The Drunkard’s Walk  connected topics in new ways, filled gaps in what I knew and aroused more questions. For example, I am fascinated by ancient Greek philosophers for their balanced, beautiful and intelligent concepts and debates about the world. I am saddened that the ancient Roman domination brought about the demise of the great Greek culture to a degree.

This book challenged my thinking by explaining how the concepts of statistics arose from Roman culture because they were practical, and cared more about actual lives, and realized that statistics were both useful and sexy. Greeks, on the other hand, believed that gods are everything and that everything is determined by universal rules, so there is no need to talk about statistics – not to mention randomness, a concept that could not coexist with the Greek idea of gods.

The Drunkard’s Walk reminds me of one of my favorite Chinese books, and the two would be great to read together.  The title of the second book is Does God Throw Dice? The history of atomic physics.

The author of the earlier book, Tianyuan Cao, though claiming to be an atheist he seems to admit the existence of God. Much of intellectual debate through the ages, and certainly high-level physics, boils down to a debate about whether god exists.

The main focus of Does God Play Dice? is how the quest to understand the nature of light – as wave, particle, or both --led to many big steps in modern or late physics. And, as the reference to a game of chance suggests, this is also a book about whether randomness exists, and whether randomness actually paves the way for every discovery. Physicists seeking to understand light, for instance, discovered electro-magnetic waves and wave-particle dualism. The most interesting part, to me at least, is that without randomness or the understanding of the randomness, the laws of physics would be a less standardized and more random.

Leonard Mlodinow, the author of the the Drunkard’s Walk, approaches many of the same questions from the opposite direction and describes how the rules of mathematics, or logic, yields randomness. As physics depends heavily on math it discusses it from time to time, these two are perfect match for me. Why does randomness exist? Is there any point in making plans for the weekend? Can weather reports be trusted? Mlodinow puts forth some answers in this book.

The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was that it persuaded me to see the world as more random than before. I now understand why some physicists commit suicide after learning that there is no universal law to explain everything that happens in this universe; in my own life, I understand waves of hopelessness better.

But I haven’t given up. After all, Issac Newton and Albert Einstein each made massively important discoveries during their failed quest to discover a unifying principle. I am looking to what I might discover while looking for something else.