Fundamental Theories of Physics 192 Karl Svozil Physical (A)Causality Determinism, Randomness and Uncaused Events www.com Fundamental Theories of Physics Volume 192 Series editors Henk van Beijeren, Utrecht, The Netherlands Philippe Blanchard, Bielefeld, Germany Paul Busch, York, United Kingdom Bob Coecke, Oxford, United Kingdom Dennis Dieks, Utrecht, The Netherlands Bianca Dittrich, Waterloo, Canada Detlef Dürr, München, Germany Ruth Durrer, Genève, Switzerland Roman Frigg, London, United Kingdom Christopher Fuchs, Boston, USA Giancarlo Ghirardi, Trieste, Italy Domenico J. Giulini, Bremen, Germany Gregg Jaeger, Boston, USA Claus Kiefer, Köln, Germany Nicolaas P. Landsman, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Christian Maes, Leuven, Belgium Mio Murao, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan Hermann Nicolai, Potsdam, Germany Vesselin Petkov, Montreal, Canada Laura Ruetsche, Ann Arbor, USA Mairi Sakellariadou, London, UK Alwyn van der Merwe, Denver, USA Rainer Verch, Leipzig, Germany Reinhard F. Werner, Hannover, Germany Christian Wüthrich, Geneva, Switzerland Lai-Sang Young, New York City, USA www.com The international monograph series “Fundamental Theories of Physics” aims to stretch the boundaries of mainstream physics by clarifying and developing the theoretical and conceptual framework of physics and by applying it to a wide range of interdisciplinary scientific fields.
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More information about this series at http://www.com/series/6001 www.com Karl Svozil Physical (A)Causality Determinism, Randomness and Uncaused Events www.com Karl Svozil Institute for Theoretical Physics Vienna University of Technology Vienna Austria ISSN 0168-1222 ISSN 2365-6425 (electronic) Fundamental Theories of Physics ISBN 978-3-319-70814-0 ISBN 978-3-319-70815-7 (eBook) https://doi.1007/978-3-319-70815-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959895 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adap- tation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.
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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland www.com This book is dedicated to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804 in Königsberg, Prussia) “Sapere aude!” www.com Preface Our perception of what is knowable and what is unknown, and, in particular, our viewpoint on randomness, lies at the metaphysical core of our worldview. This view has been shaped by the narratives created and provided by the experts through various sources—rational, effable, and (at least subjectively) ineffable ones.
There are, and always have been, canonical narratives by the orthodox main- stream. Often orthodoxy delights itself in personal narcissism, which is adminis- tered and mediated by the attention economy, which in turn is nurtured by publicity and the desire of audiences “to know”—to attain “truth” in a final rather than in a procedural, preliminary sense. Alas, science is not in the position to provide final answers. Alternatively, the narrative is revisionistic.
Already Emerson noted [200],“whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist …Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” But although iconoclasm, criticism, and nonconformism seem to be indispensable for progress, they bear the danger of diverting effort and attention to unworthy “whacky” attempts and degenerative research programs. Both orthodoxy as well as iconoclasts are indispensable elements of progress and different sides of the same coin. They define themselves through the respective other, and their interplay and interchange facilitate the possibility to obtain knowledge about Nature. And so it goes on and on; one is reminded of Nietzsche’seternal recurrence.1 It might always be like that; at least there is not the slightest indication that our theories settle and become canonized even for a human life span; let alone indef- initely.
Indeed, any canonization might indicate a dangerous situation and be detrimental to science. Our universe seems to foster instability and change; indeed, volatility and compound interest is a universal feature of it. Physical and other unknowns might be systemic and inevitable, and actually quite enjoyable, features of science and human cognition. The sooner we learn how 1 German original: ewige Wiederkunft [373].com viii Preface to perceive and handle them, the sooner we shall be able to exploit their innovative capacities.
But there is more practical, pragmatic utility to randomness and indeterminism than just this epistemological joy. I shall try to explain this with two examples. Suppose that you want to construct a bridge, or some building of sorts. As you try to figure out the supporting framework, you might end up with the integral of some function which has no analytic solution you can figure out.
Or even worse: The function is the result of some computation and has no closed analytic form which you know of. So, all you can do is to try to compute this function numerically. But this might be deceptive because the algorithm for numerical integration has to be “atypical” with respect to the function in the sense that all parts of the function are treated “unbiased.” Suppose, for instance, that the function shows some peri- odicity. Then, if the integration would evaluate the function only at points which are in sync with that functional periodicity, this would result in a strong bias toward those functional values which fall within a particular sync period; and hence a bad approximation of the integral.
Of course, if, in the extreme case, the function is almost constant, any kind of sampling of points—even very concentrated ones (even a single point), or periodic ones yield reasonable approximations. But “random” sampling alone guarantees that all kinds of functional scenarios are treated well and thus yield good approximations. Other examples for the utility of randomness are in politics. Random selection plays a role in aGedankenexperiment in which one is asked to sketch a theory of justice and appropriation of wealth if a veil of ignorance is kept over one’s own status and destiny; or if one imagines being born into randomly selected families [422].
And as far as the ancient Greeks are concerned, those who practiced their form of democracy have been (unlike us) quite aware that sooner or later, democracies deteriorate into oligarchies. This is almost inevitable: Because of mathematical mechanisms related to compound interestet cetera, an uninhibited growth tends to increase and accumulate wealth and political as well as economic power into fewer and fewer entities and individuals. We can see those aggregations of wealth and powers in action on all political scales, local and global. Two immediate conse- quences are misappropriations of all kinds of assets and means, as well as corruption.
As the ancient Athenians watched similar tendencies in their times they came up with two solutions to neutralize the danger of tyranny by compounded power: one was ostracism, and the other one was sortition, the widespread random selection of official ministry as a remedy to curb corruption [271, p. As Aristotle noted, “the appointment of magistrates by lot is thought to be democratic, and the election of them oligarchical” [19, Politics IV, 1294b8, pp. The ancient Greeks used fairly sophisticated random selection procedures, algorithms, and machines calledvkgqxsqiom(kleroterion) for, say, the selection of lay judges [177, 164]. Then and now, accountable and certified “randomized” selection procedures have been of great importance for the public affairs.com Preface ix This book has been greatly inspired by, and intends to be an “update” of, Philipp Frank’s 1932 The Law of Causality and its Limits [219, 220].
It is written in the spirit of the enlightenment and scientific rationality. One of its objective is to give a status quo of the situation regarding physical indeterminism. Another is the recognition that certain things are provable unknowable; but that does not mean that they need to be “irreducibly random.” As a result, the book is not in praise of what is often pronounced as “discovery of indeterminism and chance in the natural sciences,” but rather attempts to serve two objectives: On the one hand, it locates and scrutinizes claims of absolute randomness and irreducible indeterminism. On the other hand, it enumerates the means relative limits of expressing truth by finite formal systems.
It is amazing that, when it comes to the perception of chance versus determin- ism, people, in particular, scientists, become very emotional [497] and seem to be driven by ideologies and evangelical agendas and furors which sometimes are hidden even to themselves. Consequently, there is an issue that we need to be aware of when discussing such matters at all times. Already Freud advised analysts to adopt a contemplative strategy ofevenly-suspended attention [225, 224]; and, in particular, to be aware of the dangers caused by “…the temptation of projecting outwards some of the peculiarities of his own personality, which he has dimly perceived, into the field of science, as a theory having universal validity; he will bring the psycho-analytic method into discredit, and lead the inexperienced astray.” [224]2 And the late Jaynes warns and disapproves the Mind Projection Fallacy [288, 289, 413], by pointing out that“we are all under an ego-driven temptation to project our private thoughts out onto the real world, by supposing that the creations of one’s own imagination are real properties of Nature, or that one’s own ignorance signifies some kind of indecision on the part of Nature.” Let me finally acknowledge the help I got from friends and colleagues. I have learned a lot from many colleagues, from their publications, from their discussions and encouragements, and from their cooperation.
I warmly thank Alastair Abbott, Herbert Balasin, John Barrow, Douglas Bridges, Adán Cabello, Cristian S. Calude, Elena Calude, Kelly James Clark, John Casti, Gregory Chaitin, Michael Dinneen, Monica Dumitrescu, Daniel Greenberger, Jeffrey Koperski, Andrei Khrennikov, Frederick W. Portillo, Jose Maria Isidro San Juan, Ludwig Staiger, Johann Summhammer, Michiel van Lambalgen, Udo Wid, and Noson Yanofsky. This work was supported in part by the European Union, Research Executive Agency (REA), Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES-269151-RANPHYS grant.
In particular, I kindly thank Pablo de Castro from the Open Access Project of LIBER - Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche for his kind guidance and help with regard to the open access rendition of this book. 2 German original [225]: “Er wird leicht in die Versuchung geraten, was er in dumpfer Selbstwahrnehmung von den Eigentümlichkeiten seiner eigenen Person erkennt, als allgemeingültige Theorie in die Wissenschaft hinauszuprojizieren, er wird die psychoanalytische Methode in Misskredit bringen und Unerfahrene irreleiten.