“Non-ergodic” is a fundamental but too little known scientific concept. Non-ergodicity stands in contrast to “ergodicity.” “Ergodic” means that the system in question visits all its possible states. In statistical mechanics, this is based on the famous “ergodic hypothesis,” which, mathematically, gives up integration of Newton’s equations of motion for the system. Ergodic systems have no deep sense of “history.” Non-ergodic systems don’t visit all their possible states. In physics, perhaps the most familiar case of a non-ergodic system is a spin glass that breaks ergodicity and visits only a tiny subset of its possible states—hence, exhibits history in a deep sense.
Even more profound, the evolution of life in our biosphere is deeply non-ergodic and historical. The universe won’t create all possible life-forms. This, together with heritable variation, is the substantial basis for Darwinism, without yet specifying the means of heritable variation, whose basis Darwin did not know. Non-ergodicity gives us history.