The ontology of randomness

“Random” commonly is associated with determinism, order, prophecy, and the future. Starkly put by one philosopher, “Randomness is unpredictability” (Eagle, 2005), quoting mainstream logician Suppes in saying “Phenomena that we cannot predict must be judged random” (Suppes, 1984, p. 32). People rely upon uncertainty (encryption and defeating bias). Tables of random numbers are based on the supposition that humans subconsciously create patterns and cannot generate randomness. Gambling casinos are about the “luck of the draw”. Human survival depends on remembering patterns of past events in order to adapt to the changing environment, as well as on randomness in science. Our focus is not only on considering whether randomness exists, i.e., ontology, but the reason for it. Turmoil in the field of experts is expressed by “… there is no such thing as a random number - there are only methods to produce random numbers...” (Von Neumann, 1951; Fiorini and De Giacomo, 2014, p. 5). How can one create something that cannot exist? Yet, at the most basic building block level of existence, Planck scale, there is inherent uncertainty (perhaps immanent in the macro world) with which persons have difficulty accepting. A new view of randomness will be presented here, based on the often neglected philosophy of dialectics, apprehension of something in terms of what it is not, a process understanding, rather than one of identifying objects. This short space allows only a small sampling of approaches to the ontology of randomness for the reader to explore in depth through cited references. If one can begin to think beyond the mechanics (as in random number generators) then this encyclopedia entry will have accomplished its purpose.