Abstract
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum mechanics that introduced fundamental indeterminacy into physics. We show that there exist alternative stories to be told in which classical mechanics, too, can be interpreted as a fundamentally indeterministic theory. On the one hand, this leaves room for the many possibilities of an open future, yet, on the other, it brings into classical physics some of the conceptual issues typical of quantum mechanics, such as the measurement problem. We discuss here some of the issues of an alternative, indeterministic classical physics and their relation to the theory of information and the notion of causality.
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Notes
- 1.
By indeterminism we denote the sufficient condition that there exists at least one phenomenon, or a type of phenomena, which does not obey determinism.
- 2.
Probabilities are said to be irreducible if “it is not possible by further investigation to discover further facts that will provide a better estimate of the probability.” [4].
- 3.
This trend of doubting determinism in the Vienna school of statistical physics has been referred to as the Vienna indeterminism in the philosophical literature [8].
- 4.
We acknowledge Sabine Hossenfelder’s essay “Math Matters” in the 2020 FQXi Essay Contest for Ref. [11].
- 5.
We use here the expression “interpretation” and not “theory” because we consider only empirically indistinguishable predictions (in the same sense of the interpretations of quantum mechanics) [20].
- 6.
We borrow this name from the foundations of quantum mechanics, where the attribution “orthodox” is usually associated to the most widespread interpretation of the quantum formalism, also called the “Copenhagen interpretation”, attributed to Niels Bohr and his school.
- 7.
To these two main aspects of classical physics one has to add a third one, (iii) that there exists a background time which allows to speak about the state of a physical system at a certain instant of time and its evolution at later instants.
- 8.
Note that Kant refers to the term rule as a univocal correspondence and does not contemplate any non-deterministic (e.g., probabilistic) law that relates causes and effects.
- 9.
- 10.
Note that the celebrated Many-World Interpretation of quantum mechanics affirms that all the possible alternative outcomes actually happen, hence refuting the mutual exclusiveness thereof. While this is also a possible further interpretation of the FIQ-based physics, we will not consider this further.
- 11.
One can object that in fact, the events were causally determined by the operation of shuffling and it is only subjective ignorance that makes this appear random. Fair enough, but then substitute the shoes with two quantum entangled particles and you will convince yourself that you have “determinism” (in the sense of perfect correlations) without causality (see [43]).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to show my gratitude to Nicolas Gisin and Borivoje Dakić for the many interesting discussions and their comments that helped to improve this essay. I am indebted also to the many, interesting discussions held on the forum of FQXi Community during the 2020 Essay Contest. I also acknowledge Marco Erba for pointing out Ref. [42] to me.
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Del Santo, F. (2021). Indeterminism, Causality and Information: Has Physics Ever Been Deterministic?. In: Aguirre, A., Merali, Z., Sloan, D. (eds) Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70354-7_5
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