Randomness and Scientific Experiment
Randomness is closely related to unpredictability of observation results and
impossibility to predict them with sufficient accuracy. The nature of randomness is
based on the lack of exhaustive information about the phenomenon under observation.
As soon as you learn the origin of that phenomenon, you no longer consider it
accidental or random. On the other hand, a random phenomenon whose origin has been
revealed loses nothing of its random character. Randomness can be characterized as a
type of relation stipulated by conditions that are inessential, superfluous, and
extraneous to this particular phenomenon. Thus, the knowledge of the phenomenon is
incomplete by definition.
Since our knowledge is incomplete, the observation results may prove impossible to
predict with great accuracy. For instance, the initial state of the objects under
observation may change imperceptibly for the used instruments, but these small
changes may cause significant alterations in the final results. The sophisticated
nature of the observed phenomenon may make accurate computation impossible in
practice, if not in theory. Finally, even minor uncontrollable disturbing factors
may cause serious deviations from a hypothetically "true value".
Although irregularities and deviations may occur, observational or experimental
results still reveal a certain typical regularity called statistical stability.
Various forms of statistical stability are formulated as specific rules that
mathematical statistics calls laws of large numbers. This stability is the basis for
the mathematical theory underlying the mathematical model of random phenomena. This
theory is known as the theory of probability.