Fundamental Theories of Physics 192 Karl Svozil Physical (A)Causality Determinism, Randomness and Uncaused Events 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. W. 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 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. Original contributions in well-established fields such as Quantum Physics, Relativity Theory, Cosmology, Quantum Field Theory, Statistical Mechanics and Nonlinear Dynamics are welcome. The series also provides a forum for non-conventional approaches to these fields. Publications should present new and promising ideas, with prospects for their further development, and carefully show how they connect to conventional views of the topic. Although the aim of this series is to go beyond established mainstream physics, a high profile and open-minded Editorial Board will evaluate all contributions carefully to ensure a high scientific standard. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6001 Karl Svozil Physical (A)Causality Determinism, Randomness and Uncaused Events 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.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70815-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959895 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018. This book is an open access publication. 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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 This book is dedicated to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804 in Königsberg, Prussia) “Sapere aude!” 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]. vii 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. 77]. 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. 4408–4409]. The ancient Greeks used fairly sophisticated random selection procedures,