Part of the answer is, already noted, that the laws of nature are ultimately statistical and no more preclude choice on the part of individual components than do
statistical laws of human behavior.
Even if the shift from deterministic to
statistical laws with respect to these physical existents is accepted as reflecting an actual indeterminacy in their behavior, the reductionism is not greatly affected.
This still leaves the question as to how the larger organisms can behave other than
by statistical laws which should simulate complete determinism with the utmost precision because of the large number of elementary components (some 1032 protons and neutrons).
He goes on to remind us that «lawlessness of individual behaviour in the context of a
given statistical law is, in general, consistent with the notion of more detailed individual laws applying in a broader context» (p. 87).
«Incredibly small groups of atoms, much too small to display
exact statistical laws... play a dominating role in the very orderly and lawful events within a living organism.
[Yarhouse and Stanton] chose the wrong statistics to evaluate, they
violated statistical laws, and they didn't have a control group — just a small sample of people recruited from religious groups.
Fuzzy statistical laws shape the subatomic world, including these 36 cobalt atoms viewed here through a scanning tunneling microscope.
«There are
certain statistical laws that govern the behavior of froths, and we found that suprafroths satisfy these laws,» said Ruslan Prozorov, Ames Laboratory physicist and primary investigator.
The ideal remains that events at other levels are to be explained in terms of
these statistical laws governing events at this basic level.
Sewall Wright sees biological science as treating the externals of living things with deterministic and
statistical laws, but he believes the creatures themselves have internality and freedom.
The experiment helps scientists to understand the fundamental laws of quantum physics and their relationship with
the statistical laws of thermodynamics.