Infinite Monkey Theorem

I chanced upon a story in the New York Times a few days ago about The Infinite Monkey Theorem. The idea is that “an infinite number of monkeys, each given an infinite amount of time to peck away at a typewriter” might eventually stumble into writing the complete works of William Shakespeare. The theorem comes from the 1913 work of Émile Borel, a French mathematician. It’s an intriguing theorem—or at least I think it is, because, like stargazing, geology, and Salvador Dali, it pushes thought beyond human-scale temporal and spatial limits. In other words, it blows my mind.

So what if it might take my lifetime for our typewriting monkeys to chance upon a few words in English? With an infinite amount of time, it’s theoretically possible that lots of monkeys could chance upon the complete works of Shakespeare, right?

Well, not so fast. According to the New York Times, Stephen Woodcock has shown that these hypothetical monkeys are wasting their hypothetical time. He’s figured out the time we have until the universe loses its coherence. He’s also figured out the time it might take for monkeys to type the words and sentences that match Shakespeare’s works. And the two columns don’t match. Our monkeys don’t have time. Oh--and there aren’t enough monkeys to do it anyway!

Woodcock might be missing the point. Borel didn’t care about actual monkeys working under real-universe restraints. He was trying to illustrate a point about randomness and probability. And I think the thought experiment tells us something about authorship—something in line with the Buddhist idea of “thoughts without a thinker.”

Even our language writes itself. Try playing Wordle for a few days, and you’ll realize that certain combinations of vowels and consonants are more friendly than others. Those rules are our co-authors— as are phrases, sentiments, cadences. Even the technology of writing changes how we write—maybe even how we think.

Émile could never have conceived of the Infinite Monkey Theorem if he had worked in 1813 instead of 1913. There were no typewriters then. They had printing presses, but the thought experiment loses coherence if we substitute typeset blocks for typewriters. Perhaps it’s more realistic to imagine monkeys throwing type on the ground. Maybe it would be faster, but someone would have to set the type and print it.

So, here’s one example of an idea that is more available to us because of the technology at the time it was conceived.

Reading Paradise Lost, I wonder about Rapheal’s attempt at explaining the cosmic battles between God and Satan’s angels. Adam and Eve lived alone on the new planet Earth. They had no reference point for “engines” of war. And Raphael would have lost them right here:

…strange to us it seem’d

At first that Angel should with Angel war

And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet

So oft in Festivals of joy and love

Adam and Eve would not have known festivals. They only knew each other. Even if Rapheal had been as talented a poet as Milton was, how could he ever explain crowds to Adam and Eve. And how could he have expressed what it felt like to be crowded on the airy battlefield: the shouting and chest-pounding, the twitching angel wings?

These days, I do most of my writing longhand. I’m retired. I’m not as interested as I used to be in becoming “successful.” There are no deadlines, no reason to rush. The pace of writing on pads of paper feels luxurious. Of course, eventually, I must return to the clatter of the keyboard, but this monkey gets to push that aside until finishing the last few drafts.

When writing poetry, I’ll have two yellow pads side-by-side so I can scratch and re-scratch my way through four to eight lines on one pad, then copy the mess onto the other pad, revising as I go, perfecting—or almost perfecting—a few lines at a time. Does longhand change the result? I don’t know. I think it’s likely that it affects my cadences, if nothing else. Well, if not likely, probable.