God Does Not Play Dice

[poliphilo]

 "God does not play dice" is quotable Einstein's most quotable quote. People of a religious cast of mind admire it because- divorced from context- it seems like an affirmation of faith; and so it is, but not so much in God as in Newtonian physics.  Einstein was a pioneer of quantum mechanics but came to hate how it tore up the Newtonian rulebook and allowed for certain things to happen by chance. His belief in the fundamental orderliness of the universe was, however, fundamentally unscientific- based on nothing better than a hunch, a feeling, an aesthetic preference, an assumption- and it led him to spend the latter part of his career chasing rainbows. "God does not play dice" is not the statement of a scientist at the top of his game but of a man obstinately setting his face against the most advanced science of his day- and those who bandy it about and wear it on their tee shirts should be advised that, according to all the best and most up to the minute information we possess, it is absolutely wrong.