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Chaos & Chromosomes
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Question:
In the theory of chaos, everything is affected by something that
previously occurred, and nothing is random. My teacher says that the way that
chromosomes line up and split is pure random. I say that it is effected by
other factors that we cannot predict. Who is right?
Replies:
Well, I think you are perhaps confusing two different things
here. First of all, the idea that everything is affected (and in
fact determined) by things that previously occurred is much more basic
than the theory of chaos - it underlies all of classical mechanics
which has been around since Isaac Newton. But, what if those things
that previously occurred were random? The randomness around us could
be traced all the way back to the big bang. Actually, it does not
have to be traced back that far, because the theory of quantum mechanics
(which was developed early in this century) tells us that on a very
small scale, nature really is non-deterministic: random things just
do happen, when we are talking about individual atoms and molecules.
Now if we are talking about division of chromosomes - there could
be a lot of non-randomness involved because these are really big
objects (compared to individual atoms) and they have properties
that might, in some deterministic fashion which we cannot yet
predict, make it much more likely for one kind of event to happen
than another. But if we do not understand this yet and cannot predict
it, it is not such a bad approximation to assume that things are purely
random.
In any case, the statement that "nothing is random" is wrong - and
is more and more wrong as you look at smaller and smaller systems
but even for large systems it is often not a bad approximation to assume
random behavior when things are too complex to predict.
Arthur Smith
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Update: June 2012
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