ABSTRACT
An individual may decide to vote Liberal Democrat, buy a video, become a nurse or, even, commit suicide in an apparently unpredictable manner but, when the aggregate effect of such decisions are examined, law-like patterns are found. The market shares of goods such as breakfast cereals may be remarkably stable in the short term even though customers think they are free to choose which they will buy. Florence Nightingale was able to resolve the apparent conflict to her own satisfaction, although this resolution owed nothing to the insight which an understanding of probability theory would have given her. The numbers are not absolutely constant, but the variation over time seems haphazard. The tendency of the argument thus far is to show that lawfulness may arise from chance rather than from some externally imposed law. In the physical sciences the situation is often relatively clear-cut.
