You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture…. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one.
Albert Einstein, letter to Max Born, 1944
This book is in many ways an expansion of ideas I first discussed in On The Absence of Disorder in Nature, published in 1979 on the occasion of the centennial of Albert Einstein’s birth. At the time, I wanted to make my case in support of Einstein, who believed that we live in a world of complete law and order. As is well known, Einstein rejected the traditional view of quantum theory that nature is inherently probabilistic, and he lived the later years of his life more or less ostracized from the scientific community. Although Einstein is still celebrated as one of the greatest minds ever to have lived (he was called the “Person of the Century” by Time Magazine in December, 1999), his failure to embrace quantum theory is still met with scorn and derision on the part of many fellow scientists. They ask something like, How could Einstein have been so right about so many things and yet so wrong about quantum theory?
Few physicists think that Einstein was on the right path when he rejected quantum theory and insisted on law and order, but it turns out that he was correct when he said that “God does not play dice.” Einstein, I maintain, will have the last laugh. The world is in order and never out of order. We will not be able to give Einstein everything he was looking for (his wish for unlimited prediction will remain unfulfilled, and the “spooky action at a distance” that he so dreaded has been confirmed), but we will give him enough.
I realize, of course, that concepts such as “right” and “correct” may have no place in science, which is often said to proceed asymptotically towards truth or reality. For example, Carl Sagan once maintained that “absolute certainty will always elude us.” Such a sentiment may be true in science, but nevertheless we can know with 100% certainty that nature is governed by law and order, not chance and probability. If final answers can be achieved, as I affirm, we will have to go beyond science in order to achieve them.
We will not reject the scientific method, but we will see that it is quite limited concerning the kinds of questions it can answer. Science is not the only valuable line of inquiry into reality, despite what some scientists like to claim. And it turns out that science, despite its much discussed “self-correcting” mechanism, is based on various longstanding assumptions about nature that have no grounding in evidence and also happen to be completely wrong.
For example, “could the past have occurred otherwise?” is an important question that we all ask on occasion. The question cannot be answered through mathematics, logic, reason, or experiment, but it can be answered correctly nonetheless. And the correct (and final) answer has major implications for how we think about reality, time, the future, and human freedom.
Although we have an interest in knowing whether natural events such as hurricanes and quantum experiments could have occurred otherwise, what we really want to know is whether we ourselves could have acted differently in the past. Could we now be in a state other than the one we are actually in? Could we have chosen otherwise? Do we have genuine free will? The book’s title—God Does Not Play Dice: the Fulfillment of Einstein’s Quest for Law and Order in Nature—suggests that the answer to such questions is at hand.
Besides presenting both a qualitative and a quantitative solution to the free will problem (five words and three mathematical symbols, respectively), I will offer final answers to many other of our deepest mysteries, including the relationship between past, present, and future; the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat; the nature vs. nurture controversy; and the question of design vs. chance in evolution. Departing from the conventional wisdom, I am going to challenge some of our most basic beliefs. (By the way, I do so somewhat reluctantly, as it would be much easier to maintain the status quo. I am by nature one who likes the path of least resistance.) I will force us to consider new, startling, and even unthinkable possibilities. However, the solutions I am going to put forth are entirely logical and, for the most part, quite simple.
A word of warning. Do not bother reading further if you do not have an open mind. I have on occasion “talked shop” with various physicists, and they tend fall into two types. The first type (a small minority, in my experience) quickly understands concepts such as CFD (Contra-Factual Definiteness) and the central role that it and similar hypotheses play in science. They are willing to question their assumptions and rethink longstanding positions. The second type (a vast majority, as far as I can tell) isn’t really interested in anything that challenges their (supposedly secure) world view. They tend to get nervous and upset when I point out the existence of the hypothesis of equal a priori probabilities and the fact that although it has no experimental support, it is at the center of probability theory, statistical mechanics, the second law of thermodynamics, and many other sciences. They are uncomfortable with the notion that the hardest of the hard sciences might not be based on experimental evidence after all.
I once talked about the foundations of probability theory at a dinner where a physicist was present, and he nearly went berserk. His response went something like, “How could Las Vegas exist if what you are saying is true?” This poor soul didn’t have a philosophical bone in his body (he had never heard of Karl Popper, for example) and was absolutely convinced that experiments had shown nature to be ruled by a fundamental chance. He didn’t want to think clearly about the distinction between the individual event and the long run. In retrospect, it is plain that he had never been taught a thing about his own assumptions, and he wasn’t going to start examining them now. He was perfectly happy to dismiss me as a “crank” (a favorite word among scientists used to disparage those who introduce new ideas that may appear to be unfounded and nonsensical), when all I was trying to do was show him the existence of a well-documented scientific hypothesis and what it meant for probability theory. He had never heard of the hypothesis, so in his mind it didn’t exist. He was nearing retirement, and no one was going to rain on his “physics is as solid as a rock” parade.
I have often found scientists to be quite defensive when their theories and beliefs are questioned. They like to think that they deal in a world of solid facts and experimental observations. In my experience, they tend not to be very open-minded. They may talk about wanting to know how things really work and go on and on about how willing they are to entertain new ideas and change their minds, but they typically don’t want to acknowledge their assumptions or beliefs, much less question them. Assumptions and beliefs are often hidden, and bringing them to light involves an introspection and self-examination seldom associated with scientists.
In Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics, Nick Herbert summed up the state of affairs in existence when he was in graduate school (and probably still largely true today). He wrote, “when I asked my teachers what quantum theory actually meant—that is what was the reality behind the mathematics—they told me that it was pointless for a physicist to ask questions about reality. Best to stick with the math and the experimental facts, they cautioned, and stop worrying about what was going on behind the scenes.” If one isn’t interested in what is really going on, one is to take refuge in quantification. This path has been advocated by many, and it seems to work. After all, quantum theory has been called the most successful theory in the history of science, never having failed an experimental test.
But as we shall see, a key contention of quantum theory is not subject to testing, despite what many scientists have claimed since the famous Solvay conference in Brussels in 1927. Scientists often use the term “mere philosophy” in a derogatory manner to refer to propositions that cannot be tested, but the notion that nature is inherently probabilistic falls squarely into this category. It turns out that there is no experimental evidence whatsoever to support such a viewpoint. One can certainly disagree with Einstein if one is so inclined, but
