The explicit argument against the creation of long texts by completely random processes dates back more than two thousand years, to Cicero. In his De natura deorum (“On the Nature of the Gods”), Balbus the Stoic presents the following argument against the atomists (such as Democritus), who have argued that the order of nature arose out of the random collision of atoms: “I can’t but marvel that there could be anyone who can persuade themselves that solid atoms moving under the force of gravity could construct this elaborate and beautiful world out of their chance collisions. If they believe this could have happened, then I don’t understand why they shouldn’t also think that if innumerable copies of the twenty-one letters of the alphabet, made of gold or what have you, were shaken together and thrown out on the ground they could spell out the whole text of the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether chance would succeed in spelling out a single verse!
— Lloyd, Seth. Programming the Universe. A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006.
