[Leibniz] has this ... "that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so..." - John Horton Conway

[Y]ou've probably heard of the theory of relativity. ...Most of us have heard the assertion that you can't transmit information faster than the speed of light. Most of us... hear it on authority only. We don't really understand why not. ...The reason is ...there's no absolute notion of time. Time depends on which coordinate system you're using... on your frame of reference... As seen from one frame of reference, event A can be before event B and as seen from another frame of reference, event B came first. The world [universe] hasn't got a standard definition of time.

The general... problem... packing... in n-dimensional space. ...[T]here is nothing mysterious about n-dimensional space. A point in real n-dimensional space <math>\R^n</math> is... a string of real numbers<math>x = (x_1,x_2,x_3, ...,x_n)</math>.A sphere in <math>\R^n</math> with center <math>u = (u_1,u_2,u_3, ...,u_n)</math> and radius <math>\rho</math> consists of all points <math>x</math>... satisfying <math>(x_1-u_1)^2 + (x_2-u_2)^2+ ... +(x_n-u_n)^2 = \rho^2</math>. We can describe a sphere packing in <math>\R^n</math>... by specifying the centers <math>u</math> and the radius.

The rise of determinism, it's just a consequence of the fact, science advanced tremendously, as a result mostly of... Newton and people like Laplace. They could determine things, but it's only the large scale science that ...seems ...deterministic. This century it's not been so.