Instead, they learned to think of the world in the second way, as a black box. We can see what goes into the box and what comes out of it, but not what happens inside; we can only draw inferences about the odds of input A producing output Z. Seeing nature through the lens of probability theory is what mathematicians call the stochastic view. The word comes from the Greek stochastes, a diviner, which in turn comes from stokhos, a pointed stake used as a target by archers. We
