DECLIlsrE OF DETERMINISM EDDIE GTON 151 



physicists, having spent a few years investigating certain phenomena 

 and being baffled to discover a cause, have jumped to the conclusion 

 that there is no cause. That is not the way in which the idea of 

 indeterminacy came into physics. I have tried to explain how it 

 originated in the earlier part of this address. 



CRITICISM OF INDETERMINISM 



In saying that there is no contemporaneous characteristic of the 

 radioactive atom determining the date at which it is going to break 

 up, we mean that in the picture of the atom as drawn in present-day 

 physics no such characteristic appears; the atom which will break 

 up in 1960 and the atom which will bieak up in the year 150000 are 

 drawn precisely alike. But, you will say, surely that only means 

 that the characteristic is one which physics has not yet discovered ; in 

 due time it will be found and inserted in the picture either of the 

 atom or of its environment. If such indeterminacy were exceptional 

 that would be the natural conclusion and we should have no objec- 

 tion to accepting such an explanation as a likely way out of a diffi- 

 culty. But the radioactive atom was not brought forward as a 

 difficulty; it was brought forward as a favorable illustration of 

 that which applies in greater or lesser degree to all kinds of phenom- 

 ena. There is a difference between explaining away an exception 

 and explaining away a rule. 



The persistent critic continues, " You are evading the point. I 

 contend that there are characteristics unknown to you which com- 

 pletely predetermine not only the time of break up of the radio- 

 active atom but all physical phenomena. How do you know there 

 are not? You are not omniscient." It is at this point I want to 

 shout and wake my critic. So I will tell you a story. 



About the year 2000, the famous archeologist Professor Lambda 

 discovered an ancient Greek inscription which recorded that a for- 

 eign prince, whose name was given as KavSet/cA?;?, came with his fol- 

 lowers into Greece and established his tribe there. The professor, 

 anxious to identify the prince, after exhausting other sources of 

 information, began to look through the letters C and K in the 

 Encyclopedia Athenica. His attention was attracted by an article 

 on Canticles who it appeared was the son of Solomon. Clearly that 

 was the required identification; no one could doubt that Kai'SetKAijs 

 was the Jewish prince Canticles. His theory attained great notoriety. 

 At that time the great powers of Greece and Palestine were con- 

 cluding an entente and the Greek Prime Minister in an eloquent per- 

 oration made touching reference to the newly discovered historical 

 ties of kinship between the two nations. Some time later Professor 

 Lambda happened to refer to the article again and discovered an 



