Physics is often presented as the example of a deterministic explanation of our world. Furthermore, it is often claimed that all good explanations must follow that structure. This is usually illustrated by classical physics, a theory whose explanatory power is truly impressive, despite (or because?) the fact that its limits are well understood. Indeed, the domain of validity of classical mechanics is limited by relativity and quantum theory whose predictions are more accurate when speed and size (or action) get close to critical values determined by the universal constants c and \(\hbar \), respectively.
Classical mechanics is a set of dynamical equations, with initial conditions—typically position and momentum of point particles—given by real numbers. Except for particular cases,Footnote 1 these dynamical equations together with the initial conditions determine completely and uniquely the solutions at all future and past times. Hence, the conclusion that classical physics is deterministic.
This has huge consequences. First, as said, this is often taken as the goal of all good scientific explanations. For example, many philosophers and physicists try to formulate quantum physics in such a way as to recover something like classical determinism, despite quantum randomness; in Sects. 7 and 8 I discuss Bohmian mechanics in this context. Second, if scientific determinism would be the only good scientific explanation, then it would be highly tempting to conclude that everything covered—at least in principle—by science happens by necessity, i.e. is determined since the big-bang, including all physiological processes.
In my opinion—but this paper is independent of this opinion—this has dreadful consequences: our world would be like a movie in a closed box without any spectator. If this paper is valid, then there is a greater harmony between physics and our experience (Dolev 2016).
In the first part of this paper I argue that there is another theory, similar but different from classical mechanics, with precisely the same set of predictions, though this alternative theory is indeterministic.Footnote 2 In a nutshell, this alternative theory keeps the same dynamical equations as classical mechanics, but all parameters, including the initial conditions are given by numbers containing only a finite amount of information. I do not make any metaphysical claims about space, time nor numbers, but notice that the mathematics used in practice is always finite. In Sects. 3–5 I argue that this alternative classical mechanics is more natural because it doesn’t assume the existence of inaccessible information. One way to argue in favour of limiting physics to numbers with finite information is that any finite volume of space can contain only a finite amount of information (see Sect. 4). Consequently, the huge empirical evidence for classical mechanics equally applies to the alternative indeterministic theory. The alternative theory has the same (enormous) explanatory power, Sect. 6. It is thus not correct to claim that the empirical evidence and the explanatory power of classical mechanics supports a deterministic world view, since the same body of evidence equally supports an empirically equivalent but indeterministic alternative classical mechanics theory.
In the second part of this paper I argue that every indeterministic theory can be supplemented by additional variables in such a way to render it deterministic (in much the same way as is done by Bohmian mechanics). In brief, it suffices to assume that all the indeterminism that is required at some point in time when, according to the indeterministic theory, God plays dice, i.e. when potentialities becoming actual, could be hidden as supplementary variables in the initial condition of the equivalent deterministic theory, i.e. God played all dice at the big-bang. This closes the circle: deterministic theories are equivalent to indeterministic alternative theories in which real numbers are replaced by finite-information numbers,Footnote 3 and indeterministic theories can be supplemented by additional hidden variables in such a way that the supplemented theories are deterministic.
In Sects. 7 and 8 the above rule to supplement indeterministic theories is illustrated on the alternative classical mechanics theory and on standard quantum theory, leading to standard classical mechanics and to Bohmian mechanics, respectively. Admittedly, in these two examples, the supplemented deterministic theories have, in addition to determinism, some elegance which speaks in their favour. However, one may conclude that determinism is too high a price to pay to accept these supplementary hidden variables. Indeed, indeterminism explains nicely, among other things, why probabilistic tools are so powerful in statistical mechanics (Drossel 2015). Moreover, indeterminism opens the future, makes potentialities a real mode of existence and describes the passage of time when potentialities become actual (Norton 2010; Dolev 2018).