Randomness Through Computation: Some Answers, More Questions [Hardcover]

There is a current fascination with randomness and techniques using randomness to understand nature, biology, physics, mathematics, etc. This book is a collection of essays of varying length about randomness together with two long panel discussions at the end about whether the universe is computable and the nature of randomness. At this point I must give a disclaimer, in that I am the author of one of the articles; however, I will write this review based on the articles that are not mine! The articles are by many of the leading lights in a remarkable diverse collections of areas related to this topic. There are experts here in physics talking about things like quantum mechanics, and the Copenhagen interpretation and the nature of space time. There are experts in the area of algorithmic randomness where we try to give meaning to the notion that an individual sequence is random.
There are leading computer scientists who discuss relationships of randomness to algorithms and the relationship to things like computational complexity (meaning the intrinsic difficulty of computational processes when resources are used). There are articles by philosophers, and articles by people using probabilistic techniques in number theory. There is a lot more. The book grew from an earlier one planned by Zenil called ``Randomness: 5 questions'', which asked authors how they got into mathematics/computer science/biology/physics etc, what are the big questions etc. This format gives the reader some idea as to the topics discussed in the book, though authors have not stuck to that format. It is a book aimed at the general scientist/philosopher/mathematically literate
reader. You won't learn the precise details of quantum mechanics in this book, but what you will learn is a great deal about current thinking of a collections of leading experts in a broad range of topics in and around randomness. It certainly gave me much food for thought. I certainly found a lot of food for thought here, and regard this as an excellent addition to my library.