“… he shall find nothing in his hands.”
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Buddhist hand gesture for teaching, dharmachakra mudra, “turning the Wheel of the Dharma”
1963 was a good year for introducing metaphors of quantum physics into public consciousness. Richard Feynman delivered his introductory lectures to undergrads at Caltech, and Paul Dirac published an essay in Scientific American. Both Nobel laureates wanted non-specialists to understand that a revolution was dismantling the nature of scientific certainty. It was a realignment on par with Copernicus’ heliocentric planets and Darwin’s evolutionary vision.
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From The Feynman Lectures on Physics*: On trying to pin down the exact location of an electron …
“… it would be impossible to predict exactly what would happen. We can only predict the odds! This would mean, if it were true, that physics has given up on the problem of trying to predict exactly what will happen in a definite circumstance. Yes! physics has given up. We do not know how to predict what would happen in a given circumstance, and we believe now that it is impossible — that the only thing that can be predicted is the probability of different events. It must be recognized that this is a retrenchment in our earlier ideal of understanding nature. It may be a backward step, but no one has seen a way to avoid it.”
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From The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature*: Dirac on “The hostility some people have to the giving up of the deterministic picture…”
Quantum mechanics “led to a drastic change in the physicist’s picture of the world, perhaps the biggest that has yet taken place. This change comes from our having to give up the deterministic picture we had always taken for granted. We are led to a theory that does not predict with certainty what is going to happen in the future but gives us information only about the probability of occurrence of various events. This giving up of determinacy has been a very controversial subject, and some people do not like it at all. Einstein in particular never liked it….
“…The rules of quantum mechanics are quite definite. People know how to calculate results and how to compare the results of their calculations with experiment. Everyone is agreed on the formalism. It works so well that nobody can afford to disagree with it. But still the picture that we are to set up behind this formalism is a subject of controversy.”
Jean-Pierre Luminet*, astrophysicist, artist, poet, composer: 1982 India ink drawing of the torn fabric of space-time. The ruined cathedral symbolizes the collapse of the classical static and deterministic world, in favor of a relativistic, dynamic, and probabilistic world. The tumbling dice imply “irreversible disorganization arising from chance.”
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From Turba Philosophorum*: Bacassar the Philosopher on the nature of human certainty…
“…when a man thinks he has done and hath the World, he shall find nothing in his hands.”
—as quoted in Discourse 39 of the alchymical emblem book Atalanta fugiens*
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