Comments on Gerard Mason: The Hand that throws the dice :)

I think it is very difficult to say precisely what...

2008-09-22T13:27:00.000+01:00

I think it is very difficult to say precisely what explanation amounts to. We like to know how things work, and discovery of some sort of mechanism is satisfying. However theoretical science seems no longer to offer anything much like the sort of mechanism we encounter in our everyday lives.

Any explanation takes for granted regularities for which we might in principle demand an

Yes, that's always pointed out by scientist types ...

2008-09-21T20:28:00.000+01:00

Yes, that's always pointed out by scientist types when creationist types try to use Einstein's comment as an argument.

Still, it's odd. There doesn't seem to be a way you can have just a *little* bit of what you might call "true randomness" in the universe, at points where it's tactically convenient. It seems that either nothing is random (classical mechanics) or everything has a random

How flattering that you've read my reading list :-...

2008-09-21T11:53:00.000+01:00

How flattering that you've read my reading list :-)

I don't suppose Einstein thought of the full implications of what he said, or that he believed in God, certainly not in the big, big, super God of Christian theology who could hardly have played any sort of game of chance with himself, though he could presumably have made it look like that to inhabitants of his creation.