Apophenia

On a related theme, apophenia has come up in recent discussions. One of my favorite novels, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, addresses this quite well in story format. From the wiki:

 

"The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences in Pattern Recognition from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The Crying of Lot 49."