Does God, Play Dice ???

There's a Famous Quote from Albert Einstein

"God Does Not Play with Universe"

What does it mean ?

The common interpretation of this statement contains two myths (perhaps misunderstandings).

The first is that his use of the word ‘God’ implies that he was a religious person who believed in the existence of God. Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed, Einstein can be described more accurately as an outright atheist. Although his early up-bringing was in a highly religious Jewish environment, he soon realized that many of the things described in the Old Testament were not consistent with physical laws. His great contributions to physics came from his belief in precise mathematical laws that govern the natural world. This rational approach is antithetical to the common religious notion of a supernatural God with powers that can overcome natural laws.

We can go as far as saying that, deep down, every person (and certainly every practising scientist) must have this rational streak. You cannot do good science if you do not believe in fundamental immutable laws that govern Nature. Tomorrow, if your computer breaks down, you know it is because some part of the system failed. You call a technician hoping he/she will find out what is wrong and fix it; you certainly don’t pray to a God or go to a temple to get it fixed, though you might pray to God that the technician comes quickly ! It is interesting that we are born with this rational bent of mind.

Einstein believes about God might not be what you think of God. So what did Einstein really mean by the word ‘God’ in his statement ? Einstein of course believed in mathematical laws of nature, so his idea of a God was at best someone who formulated the laws and then left universe a-lone to evolve according to these laws. To him, the very fact that there were natural laws that the human mind could discover was evidence of a God, not a God who superseded these laws but one who created them. Thus his use of the word God is to be interpreted as the existence of natural laws of great mathematical beauty, whatever form they might take.

Which brings us to the second part of Einstein’s statement, the part about not playing dice. This relates to Einstein’s reaction to the part of Nature described by Quantum Mechanics, which is undoubtedly one of the pillars of modern physics. He felt that natural laws could not be like the throw of dice, with inherent randomness or probability. But this is exactly what QuantumMechanics tells us – that at the fundamental level Nature is inherently random, codified in Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle. Thus, the second misunderstanding about Einstein’s  statement is that his opposition to Quantum Mechanics was the raving of an old man, a man well beyond his prime who did not understand the new physics. Well, we will see below why this is all a myth.

There were thus three features of QuantumMechanics that Einstein disapproved of – it was probabilistic, nonlocal, and linear. Despite this opposition, Einstein realized that it was a successful theory within its domain of applicability. He believed that a future unified field theory would have to reproduce the results of Quantum Mechanics, perhaps as a Linear approximation to a deeper nonlinear theory. This was similar to how the relativistic gravitational field of General Relativity (with a finite propagation speed of the gravitational force) led to Newton’s law of gravitation (with its action-at-a-distance force) in the nonrelativistic limit. But Einstein was convinced that Quantum Mechanics was  no the correct approach to deducing the fundamental laws of physics.

Today, 50 years after his death, the mainstream of physics does not take Einstein’s approach seriously. The popular notion is that he was unreasonably opposed to the highly successful Quantum Mechanics. While I have tried to correct this misconception by presenting Einstein’s cogent reasoning behind his stand, only time (and perhaps future brilliant scientists who take up his approach) will tell us if he was justified. Let us not forget that Newton’s theory of gravity was enormously successful  came until Einstein along. We await the next Einstein.

 

"GOD NOT ONLY PLAYS DICE WITH THE UNIVERSE, BUT SOMETIMES THROUGH THEM BUT THEY CAN'T BE SEEN"

- Stephen Hawking