From the outset, let’s get this straight. When Einstein said, “Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht,” he wasn’t making a religious statement as much as he was making a philosophical one. Translated variously, the statement yields, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not,” but there are other versions.* Einstein believed the world was knowable, that what occurs or occurred, occurs or occurred for an identifiable reason that we have the potential to discover. He saw the world as subject to discovery, a world in which phenomena are the product of previous phenomena, a determined world. Thus, the “God does not play dice with the universe” statement attributed to Albert.
Albert just couldn’t accept a universe that had randomness and unfathomable mystery about its physical makeup. Essentially, he was disturbed by his own invention of quantum mechanics because it resulted in “uncertainty.” Add in the consequences of relativity, and Einstein’s “new” science meant that black holes not only existed, but that they also swallowed both matter and information. What goes into a black hole can’t be retrieved in any determined way, and if anything comes out of a black hole, it is beyond predictability, a point also made by Stephen Hawking.** There’s much we seemingly can’t determine, but that’s not an argument that nothing is determined.
Einstein gave permission to Professor Oswald Veblen to use his statement over a fireplace in a new math building, and then later sent a further statement about its meaning: “Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.”*** In both the original form and in Einstein’s explanation, there lies a revelation about how most people, even probably most scientists, rely on mystery to explain mystery and how we all—or most of us—come back to some degree of teleology in our explanations. “Nature hides” shows us that outside of mathematical formalism, we are awash in a sea of teleological verbiage.
Take the commonly heard expressions about “natural” disasters that incorporate some teleology. We’re always at a loss for explanation when we suffer a personal loss. Destruction, injury, and death by natural events elicit attempts to find meaning or to tie intention to place or event. For example, in answering questions about the eruption of Kilauea she was monitoring, Jessica Ball, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said, "The volcano is doing what it wants to... We're reminded what it's like to deal with the force of nature."**** “Doing what it wants to?”
Why the personification of a volcano? Why give it intention even if the “intention” is an unintended consequence of casual language and not causality? Ball, I think, would probably say that she merely meant that every volcano is a product of forces acting on matter and that its eruption along a fissure is the result of magma rising beneath Kilauea and randomly breaking through a weak spot. She would also note that magma is there because the Pacific Tectonic Plate is moving over a hotspot, a deeply rooted mass of molten and semi-molten material that contains volatiles. In other words, there’s a cause, an identifiable cause. The movement of the plate and the location of the hot spot determine the volcano’s growth and activity. The specific eruption from a fissure isn’t predictable, but the eruptive nature of the volcano is. Kilauea does what it does because it is what it is, a surface vent for a hot spot magma chamber. We know why it exists and why it erupts. Mystery solved, at least the big part of the mystery is solved. Maybe when we have better technologies like improved seismic tomography, we’ll even be able to say which fissures will erupt, how much they will spew, and even when they will erupt—but I doubt that. There are too many hidden variables.
You witness hidden variables play out almost daily in your life, don’t you? That’s one of the reasons that I try—but often fail—to take my own advice: “What you anticipate is rarely a problem.” We can’t anticipate the effects of hidden variables, such as weaknesses in rocks that split to become fissures that under pressures from escaping volatiles allow lava to spew onto the surface and destroy homes. What if those weaknesses begin as microcrystalline fractures? There’s a level of detail we will never reach, both in Nature and in our personal lives. And in the absence of such details and in retrospect with regard to a past event—like an eruption or a house fire—we look for some explanation, for something, some act, some force, some cause, that determined the event. We might not speak teleologically on purpose, but in identifying causes or ascribing them, we exhibit a deterministic view of the universe.
We desire identifiable causes. “My house burned down. God is giving me a test,” or, “I know there is a greater purpose that I just can’t see.” And just as we hear such statements from those who have suffered personal tragedies, so we also, regardless of any faith or lack thereof, have a desire “to explain.” A world without explanation, a world without information, isn’t a world most of us easily accept. Maybe Sartre and some other existentialists and maybe some avowed atheists today say they “believe” the world is meaningless, but then, in my observations, I see them act in “meaningful ways” or argue “meaningfully.” In a world that is “meaningless,” why seek meaning? Note that those who argue for meaninglessness proclaim themselves “rational” and their arguments “meaningful.” So, obviously, for them the idea of meaninglessness applies to whatever “part” of the universe and existence they determine is “meaningless.”
In the meantime, we hear people ask, “Why me?” Surely, anyone who claims to be a “purely rational scientist” or an atheist could never ask such a question. The only answer they can give that remains true to an indeterministic world (or life) is that in all the possible events that could occur, such as a personal tragedy, there’s a probability that one such event could happen “to me.” That puts such “believers” into one of two categories: 1) Right place, right time or 2) Wrong place, wrong time.
Is the universe still mysterious? Is life still mysterious? Of course. Do the quantum physicists have a point when they speak of “uncertainty,” even if what they generally are referring to is a measurement of position and momentum? Even when they refer mostly to a “probability” associated with a “wave function” identified by mathematical points and discrete (discontinuous) units? Describing the physical universe might now be a matter of mathematical formalism as far as physicists are concerned, but do they apply the same indeterminism to their daily lives? How does that principle of probability and indeterminism apply, for example, to rearing of children, handling of relationships, and assessing truth, all of which require an uninterrupted continuum in our minds? How do people act in the practice of living regardless of their avowed philosophical stand on a world that they deem to be either deterministic or indeterministic, continuous or discontinuous? What if the believer accepts Augustine of Hippo’s notion that the Creator created the probability and possibility for forms to exist and then, as the Deists of the eighteenth century thought, simply set such a universe in motion to tick like a wound clock? An indeterministic world is discontinuous, whereas a deterministic world is continuous.
“Malicious He is not,” might be a statement acceptable to both believer and nonbeliever. The optimistic believer desires an explanation of “things as they are” on the basis of a benevolent God. The nonbeliever believes the universe is indifferent in its hidden variables and probabilities, but not purposefully malicious.***** For the latter, “things happen” because they probably can happen. But isn’t that a kind of masked determinism if there are hidden variables, workings of the “clock” hidden in the mechanism inside?******
Can we really apply the probability and discreteness of the micro-world, the quantum world, where the “spin” of a subatomic particle seems to change in “steps,” rather than in a continuum of slowing down or speeding up? Hawking uses the analogy of a spinning top that to our eyes gradually slows. Quantum spins change in little jerks from one spin to the next. We act in the macro-world of our everyday lives in ways that seem continuous, believing in some kind of determinism in which the past affects the present and the present affects the future. And if determinism is at work in a world of continuous causes and effects, what or who determines?
So, example: A scuba diver enters the ocean, a seemingly continuous medium. An unpredicted discrete particle comes along; a shark appears and bites. The rescue team asks, “Why did you swim where there were sharks?” The expiring diver responds, “I didn’t think there was a chance of an encounter; the water was clear, and everywhere I looked was shark free.” The relatives ask, “Why him, Lord? Why us?” A vacationing marine biologist on the beach asks, “When will people learn that entering the water is like throwing dice?” You read about the shark attack in the next day’s paper, and then you respond with your own question, “…?”
What you ask indicates your philosophical stand on a universe that is either or both continuous or discontinuous that is either or both deterministic and indeterministic.
*Isaacson, Walter.Einstein: His Life and Universe. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007, p. 297.
** http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html
***Einstein to Oswald Veblen, Apr. 30, 1930, AEA 23-152. Pais 1982, p. 114, as quoted by Isaacson (Einstein, see * above) on p. 298.
****Sylvester, Terray and Jolyn Rosa, “Nature: Scientists defy ‘force of nature’ to unlock secrets of Hawaii volcano,” Reuters, July 8, 2018, online at https://www.yahoo.com/news/feature-scientists-defy-force-nature-unlock-secrets-hawaii-101351141.html
*****The “callous indifference” John Stuart Mill refers to in his essay “Nature” (see my essay entitled “Pillow Cases, Chins, and Your Place in Nature,” posted on 7/6/2018).
******Gosh! Even a clock seems to throw us into a quandary: What keeps the time, the slow unwinding of the spring mechanism or the second hand’s 60-per-minute discrete jumps or ticks?
Albert just couldn’t accept a universe that had randomness and unfathomable mystery about its physical makeup. Essentially, he was disturbed by his own invention of quantum mechanics because it resulted in “uncertainty.” Add in the consequences of relativity, and Einstein’s “new” science meant that black holes not only existed, but that they also swallowed both matter and information. What goes into a black hole can’t be retrieved in any determined way, and if anything comes out of a black hole, it is beyond predictability, a point also made by Stephen Hawking.** There’s much we seemingly can’t determine, but that’s not an argument that nothing is determined.
Einstein gave permission to Professor Oswald Veblen to use his statement over a fireplace in a new math building, and then later sent a further statement about its meaning: “Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.”*** In both the original form and in Einstein’s explanation, there lies a revelation about how most people, even probably most scientists, rely on mystery to explain mystery and how we all—or most of us—come back to some degree of teleology in our explanations. “Nature hides” shows us that outside of mathematical formalism, we are awash in a sea of teleological verbiage.
Take the commonly heard expressions about “natural” disasters that incorporate some teleology. We’re always at a loss for explanation when we suffer a personal loss. Destruction, injury, and death by natural events elicit attempts to find meaning or to tie intention to place or event. For example, in answering questions about the eruption of Kilauea she was monitoring, Jessica Ball, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said, "The volcano is doing what it wants to... We're reminded what it's like to deal with the force of nature."**** “Doing what it wants to?”
Why the personification of a volcano? Why give it intention even if the “intention” is an unintended consequence of casual language and not causality? Ball, I think, would probably say that she merely meant that every volcano is a product of forces acting on matter and that its eruption along a fissure is the result of magma rising beneath Kilauea and randomly breaking through a weak spot. She would also note that magma is there because the Pacific Tectonic Plate is moving over a hotspot, a deeply rooted mass of molten and semi-molten material that contains volatiles. In other words, there’s a cause, an identifiable cause. The movement of the plate and the location of the hot spot determine the volcano’s growth and activity. The specific eruption from a fissure isn’t predictable, but the eruptive nature of the volcano is. Kilauea does what it does because it is what it is, a surface vent for a hot spot magma chamber. We know why it exists and why it erupts. Mystery solved, at least the big part of the mystery is solved. Maybe when we have better technologies like improved seismic tomography, we’ll even be able to say which fissures will erupt, how much they will spew, and even when they will erupt—but I doubt that. There are too many hidden variables.
You witness hidden variables play out almost daily in your life, don’t you? That’s one of the reasons that I try—but often fail—to take my own advice: “What you anticipate is rarely a problem.” We can’t anticipate the effects of hidden variables, such as weaknesses in rocks that split to become fissures that under pressures from escaping volatiles allow lava to spew onto the surface and destroy homes. What if those weaknesses begin as microcrystalline fractures? There’s a level of detail we will never reach, both in Nature and in our personal lives. And in the absence of such details and in retrospect with regard to a past event—like an eruption or a house fire—we look for some explanation, for something, some act, some force, some cause, that determined the event. We might not speak teleologically on purpose, but in identifying causes or ascribing them, we exhibit a deterministic view of the universe.
We desire identifiable causes. “My house burned down. God is giving me a test,” or, “I know there is a greater purpose that I just can’t see.” And just as we hear such statements from those who have suffered personal tragedies, so we also, regardless of any faith or lack thereof, have a desire “to explain.” A world without explanation, a world without information, isn’t a world most of us easily accept. Maybe Sartre and some other existentialists and maybe some avowed atheists today say they “believe” the world is meaningless, but then, in my observations, I see them act in “meaningful ways” or argue “meaningfully.” In a world that is “meaningless,” why seek meaning? Note that those who argue for meaninglessness proclaim themselves “rational” and their arguments “meaningful.” So, obviously, for them the idea of meaninglessness applies to whatever “part” of the universe and existence they determine is “meaningless.”
In the meantime, we hear people ask, “Why me?” Surely, anyone who claims to be a “purely rational scientist” or an atheist could never ask such a question. The only answer they can give that remains true to an indeterministic world (or life) is that in all the possible events that could occur, such as a personal tragedy, there’s a probability that one such event could happen “to me.” That puts such “believers” into one of two categories: 1) Right place, right time or 2) Wrong place, wrong time.
Is the universe still mysterious? Is life still mysterious? Of course. Do the quantum physicists have a point when they speak of “uncertainty,” even if what they generally are referring to is a measurement of position and momentum? Even when they refer mostly to a “probability” associated with a “wave function” identified by mathematical points and discrete (discontinuous) units? Describing the physical universe might now be a matter of mathematical formalism as far as physicists are concerned, but do they apply the same indeterminism to their daily lives? How does that principle of probability and indeterminism apply, for example, to rearing of children, handling of relationships, and assessing truth, all of which require an uninterrupted continuum in our minds? How do people act in the practice of living regardless of their avowed philosophical stand on a world that they deem to be either deterministic or indeterministic, continuous or discontinuous? What if the believer accepts Augustine of Hippo’s notion that the Creator created the probability and possibility for forms to exist and then, as the Deists of the eighteenth century thought, simply set such a universe in motion to tick like a wound clock? An indeterministic world is discontinuous, whereas a deterministic world is continuous.
“Malicious He is not,” might be a statement acceptable to both believer and nonbeliever. The optimistic believer desires an explanation of “things as they are” on the basis of a benevolent God. The nonbeliever believes the universe is indifferent in its hidden variables and probabilities, but not purposefully malicious.***** For the latter, “things happen” because they probably can happen. But isn’t that a kind of masked determinism if there are hidden variables, workings of the “clock” hidden in the mechanism inside?******
Can we really apply the probability and discreteness of the micro-world, the quantum world, where the “spin” of a subatomic particle seems to change in “steps,” rather than in a continuum of slowing down or speeding up? Hawking uses the analogy of a spinning top that to our eyes gradually slows. Quantum spins change in little jerks from one spin to the next. We act in the macro-world of our everyday lives in ways that seem continuous, believing in some kind of determinism in which the past affects the present and the present affects the future. And if determinism is at work in a world of continuous causes and effects, what or who determines?
So, example: A scuba diver enters the ocean, a seemingly continuous medium. An unpredicted discrete particle comes along; a shark appears and bites. The rescue team asks, “Why did you swim where there were sharks?” The expiring diver responds, “I didn’t think there was a chance of an encounter; the water was clear, and everywhere I looked was shark free.” The relatives ask, “Why him, Lord? Why us?” A vacationing marine biologist on the beach asks, “When will people learn that entering the water is like throwing dice?” You read about the shark attack in the next day’s paper, and then you respond with your own question, “…?”
What you ask indicates your philosophical stand on a universe that is either or both continuous or discontinuous that is either or both deterministic and indeterministic.
*Isaacson, Walter.Einstein: His Life and Universe. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007, p. 297.
** http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html
***Einstein to Oswald Veblen, Apr. 30, 1930, AEA 23-152. Pais 1982, p. 114, as quoted by Isaacson (Einstein, see * above) on p. 298.
****Sylvester, Terray and Jolyn Rosa, “Nature: Scientists defy ‘force of nature’ to unlock secrets of Hawaii volcano,” Reuters, July 8, 2018, online at https://www.yahoo.com/news/feature-scientists-defy-force-nature-unlock-secrets-hawaii-101351141.html
*****The “callous indifference” John Stuart Mill refers to in his essay “Nature” (see my essay entitled “Pillow Cases, Chins, and Your Place in Nature,” posted on 7/6/2018).
******Gosh! Even a clock seems to throw us into a quandary: What keeps the time, the slow unwinding of the spring mechanism or the second hand’s 60-per-minute discrete jumps or ticks?
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