David Peat

22 From Certainty to Uncertaintynever satisfied. The two men drifted apart to the point where deepcommunication between them was no longer possible. Their breaksymbolizes the dislocation in thought that occurred during the twentiethcentury, a dislocation between causality and chance, between certaintyand uncertainty, objective reality and subjective reading. It is asplit that remains in physics today as a form of almost schizophrenicthinking. As the physicist Basil Hiley puts it, “physicists give lip serviceto Bohr and deny Einstein, but most of them end up ignoring whatBohr thought and still think like Einstein.” 5We Are All Suspended in LanguageNo wonder so many working physicists continue to think like Einstein,for Bohr’s mind was extremely subtle. Already he had proposed thatthe notion of complementarity extends beyond physics into the wholeof thought. Now he was questioning the very limitations of the humanmind as it seeks to grasp reality.Until the advent of quantum theory physicists had thought aboutthe universe in terms of models, albeit mathematical ones. A model isa simplified picture of physical reality; one in which, for example, certaincontingencies such as friction, air resistance, and so on have beenneglected. This model reproduces within itself some essential featureof the universe. While everyday events in nature are highly contingentand depend upon all sorts of external perturbations and contexts, theidealized model aims to produce the essence of phenomena. Applesand cannon balls fly through an idealized space free from air resistance.Balls roll down a perfectly smooth slope in the absence of friction.An electrical current flows through a perfect metal, free from flawsand dislocations. Heat circulates around a perfectly insulated cyclefrom its source to some machine.The theories of science are all about idealized models and, in turn,these models give pictures of reality. We shall explore this notion of5Basil Hiley in conversation with the author.