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And indeed in any system, the amount of time over which the details of initial conditions can ever be considered the dominant source of randomness will inevitably be limited by the level of separation that exists between the large-scale features that one observes and small-scale features that one cannot readily control.
At the end of Chapter 5 I gave some examples of constraints, and I showed that constraints do exist that can force quite complex behavior to occur.
Various models of snowflake growth exist in the standard scientific literature, typically focusing on one or two of these effects.
Presumably there do exist situations in which there is some kind of delicate balance—say of whether the first eddy is shed at the top or bottom of an object—and in which small changes in initial conditions can have a substantial effect.
effect on overall patterns of flow, one cannot realistically attribute the large-scale randomness that one sees in a turbulent fluid to randomness that exists at the level of individual particles.
But it is my strong suspicion that such purposes in fact have very little to do with the real reasons that these particular features exist.
If one looks at species that exist today, and at the fossil record of past species, then one of the most striking features is just how much is in common across vast ranges of different organisms.
So why then do higher organisms exist at all?
And indeed, if it had been known that they were worthwhile, many of the experiments could actually have been done even long before computers existed.
And beyond certain simple situations, it is difficult to see how feedback mechanisms could exist that would systematically remove predictable elements whenever they were used.