Suppose you were a giant who could not see individual people and never became aware of an aggregate of less than one million of them. You would just be able to notice that London contains more matter by day than by night. But you could not possibly be aware of the fact, that on a given day, Mr. Dixon was ill in bed and did not take his usual train. You would therefore believe the movement of matter into London in the morning and out of it in the evening to be a much more regular affair than it is. You would no doubt attribute it to some peculiar force in the Sun. A hypothesis which would be confirmed by the observation of the movement is retarded in foggy weather. If, later, you became able to observe individual people, you would find that there is less regularity than you had supposed. One day, Mr. Dixon is ill and another, Mr. Simpson. The statistical average is not affected, and to a large scale observation there is no difference. You would find that all the regularity you had previously observed could be accounted for by the statistical law of large numbers. Without supposing that Mr. Dixon and Mr. Simpson had any reason beyond caprice for their occasional failure to go to London in the morning. This is exactly the situation which physics has arrived in regard to atoms. It does not know of any laws completely determining their behaviour. And the statistical laws which it has discovered are sufficient to account for the observed regularity in the motions of large bodies. And as the case for determinism has rested on these, it seems to have broken down.”
January 15, 2012
Suppose you were a giant who could not see individual people and never became aware of an aggregate of less than one million of them. You would just be able to notice that London contains more matter by day than by night. But you could not possibly be aware of the fact, that on a given day, Mr. Dixon was ill in bed and did not take his usual train. You would therefore believe the movement of matter into London in the morning and out of it in the evening to be a much more regular affair than it is. You would no doubt attribute it to some peculiar force in the Sun. A hypothesis which would be confirmed by the observation of the movement is retarded in foggy weather. If, later, you became able to observe individual people, you would find that there is less regularity than you had supposed. One day, Mr. Dixon is ill and another, Mr. Simpson. The statistical average is not affected, and to a large scale observation there is no difference. You would find that all the regularity you had previously observed could be accounted for by the statistical law of large numbers. Without supposing that Mr. Dixon and Mr. Simpson had any reason beyond caprice for their occasional failure to go to London in the morning. This is exactly the situation which physics has arrived in regard to atoms. It does not know of any laws completely determining their behaviour. And the statistical laws which it has discovered are sufficient to account for the observed regularity in the motions of large bodies. And as the case for determinism has rested on these, it seems to have broken down.”
