David Peat

10 From Certainty to Uncertaintyblock, the first great division between Bohr and Einstein, for the latterrefused to believe that “the Good Lord plays dice with the universe.”Einstein: The Last Classical PhysicistEven now, half a century after Einstein’s death, it is too soon to assesshis position in science. In some ways his stature could be compared tothat of Newton who, following on from Galileo, created a science thatlasted for 200 years. He made such a grand theoretical synthesis that hewas able to embrace the whole of the universe. Some historians of sciencealso refer to Newton as the last magus, a man with one foot in theideas of the middle ages and the other in rationalistic science. Newtonwas deeply steeped in alchemy and sought the one Catholick Matter.He had a deep faith in a single unifying principle of all that is.Likewise Einstein, who was responsible for the scientific revolutionof relativity as well as some of the first theoretical steps into quantumtheory, is regarded by some as the last of the great classical physicists.As with Shakespeare, great minds such as Newton’s and Einstein’sappear to straddle an age, in part gazing forward into the future, inpart looking back to an earlier tradition of thought.When Einstein spoke of “the Good Lord” as not playing dice withthe universe, he was referring not to a personal god but rather to “theGod of Spinoza,” or, as with Newton, to an overarching principle ofunity that embraces all of nature. The cosmos for Einstein was a divinecreation and thus it had to make sense, it had to be rational and orderly.It had to be founded upon a deep and aesthetically beautifulprinciple. Its underlying structure had to be satisfyingly simple anduniform. Reality, for Einstein, lay beyond our petty human wishes anddesires. Reality was consistent. It reflected itself at every level. Moreover,the Good Lord had given us the ability to contemplate and understandsuch a reality.Einstein could have sat down at Newton’s dinner table and discussedthe universe with him, something he was ultimately unable todo with Bohr. Bohr and quantum theory spoke of absolute chance.“Chance” to Einstein was a shorthand way of referring to ignorance, to