Order and Disorder: A Precarious Balancing Act

2017.01.29 Is chaos the law of nature and order the dream of man, as Henry Adams once put it? Is "chance" just a name for our ignorance? This lecture demonstrates, through a few examples, why scientists and philosophers inevitably faced these questions, and what kind of answers they gave in the modern era. In order to decide whether certain curious coincidences that we experience are just the play of chance, or obey some hidden rules, one has to understand the basic laws of randomness. These laws are illustrated through a small number of mathematical examples. No mathematical prerequisites are necessary. Speaker János Pach Professor of Mathematics; Chair of Combinatorial Geometry, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Research Fellow, Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences