Deterministic and Random Evolution

After Isaac Newton's great success in celestial mechanics, a world view of determinism was held by many scientists in the 1700 and 1800's. This ended with the development of quantum mechanics, which introduced randomness at a fundamental level of our understanding of nature. In this book, the author introduces basic mathematical concepts for deterministic and random evolution. Among these are stability, bifurcation, hysteresis, time scales, expected value and variance. The gambler's ruin problem, growth processes in biology, and Ehrenfest's urn model illustrate random evolutions. The author also uses mathematical concepts to briefly discuss the arrow of time, determinism and free will, and creation vs. evolution.