Order from Chaos

What is this all about?

I read a short story many years ago that has stuck with me and provided some of the motivation behind this site. Sadly, I've lost the book and can't remember either the story's title or the author's name so I can't properly credit the person for the influence they've had on me. The story goes like this: A man comes to the conclusion that God speaks to us through randomness and so seeks to find more and more perfect examples of randomness that he can use to decipher God's message. I found the premise interesting but one aspect that really struck me was that the protagonist has been sure since his childhood that his name was spelled with a silent six (i.e. Dav6id). It was a simple idea but one that was also seemed extremely profound. Considering it was like an epiphany: expanding my mind in a direction it hadn't been before. At the end of the story (spoiler alert) the man, through studying quantum physics, is able to receive a message from God who confirms his theory and tells him that he's right about the six in his name.

My default mode of thinking seems to involve relationships. I often use analogies, metaphors and comparisons to understand or explain and simple things frequently remind me of seemingly unrelated ideas. What I occasionally end up with are interesting and unusual connections that get me thinking in a new way. My intention is to document some of that thinking here to help me crystallize these notions and to (hopefully) provide interesting reading for anyone else.

I feel like this all sounds very heavy and intellectual. In fact, the inputs into my compulsively dot-connecting mind are relatively mundane so instead of coming up with new grand philosophical designs, I've been forming links between Dan Pink's research on motivation and yogurt or Counting Crows and Plato (okay, I guess Plato is pretty heavy). I'm not really sure what's going to come next but if it seems interesting, it will end up here. Enjoy!

Update: Thanks to the hivemind at Ask Metafilter, the story has been identified as "The Spade of Reason" by Jim Cowan. Thanks interwebs!