entropic_poetry u24 welcome to blather 080618 ... z yes 080618 ... z recursive_poetry ? 080618 ... u24 For a long time I've been confused by the claimed behavioural characteristics of water particles during osmosis. My biology teacher explained to me that they moved "randomly, but in a general net direction" I never have quite got over the complete and utter and obvious contradiction involved in that statement. It's just something that's never been resolved in my mind. My then-teenaged mind wanting to question: how? How can it be random if it moves in a general net direction? I never asked, never got an answer, so I suppose it's lain there like a viral_thought, festering in my subconscious. I mean, sure I can understand that what she meant was that they move in a general net direction but with random deviations from the norm. I get that, sure. And perhaps that's all there is to it. Still, there's something just... unsettling... to me about that phrase, "random movement, but in a general net direction". I mean, on the one picture, the deviation picture, we have particles moving generally predictably, but with random deviations. And that's fine. That happens. But on the other picture, the one described by that troublesome phrase, we have a pattern emerging out of the randomness. It hides something more complex underlying it. It's a cop out. It's an ugly hack to avoid turning biology into quantum mechanics, a hamfisted explanation that, really, is trying to differentiate between different layers of scientific abstraction, when in your heart you know that you'll never get to the bottom of it without knowing the whole picture. so anyway. recursive_poetry mixed with entropic_poetry results in random movement but in a general net direction. 080618 ... u24 or perhaps (and honestly, in more likelihood) it just results in the much less interesting general net direction but with random movement. 080618 ... z brownian motion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion but i agree with you; it is a matter of scale, unless one admits actual randomness at the quantum level of physics. then the distribution would potentially achieve all possible combinations, given a lot of time. it is possible that the order is imposed by, or is a defect of observation. it bothers me too. 080630 ... dafremen Chaos marches to a different drummer..in a general net direction. 080701 what's it to you? who go blather from