I’m reading a book right now titled, “The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics” by Robert Oerter. The book outlines the current theory of Quantum Mechanics with enough history and background that a non-physicist can understand.

In this book the author makes an observation about self-determination that I found very interesting. First, understand that classical physics (pre-1900s) held that eventually we would be able to predict everything. We’d know the state of everything in the universe: its position, velocity and fields affecting it. Once physicists finished learning the remaining laws, something physicists thought was not very far off in 1900, one could gather this information about a person’s physical body and predict what a person would do, say and think now and at any point in the future. Essentially, the author commented, there wouldn’t be self-determination. All humanity would be subject to the laws of physics and a scientist with a computer fast enough could pen with absolute certainty the pages of a person’s life from infancy to death.

Then, along comes Einstein, Heisenberg and a host of others who discovered that when you peek inside the basic building blocks of the universe you lose all prognostic powers. The universe is designed so that the harder you try to determine how fast something moves, the less you can predict where that something is in space and vice-versa. Pop-culture movies sometimes make reference to this idea known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and so most have heard of it. What is less known is that this uncertainty governs all known properties in the universe. All properties pair off in twos with respect to uncertainty: velocity and position, mass and momentum, time and energy. Nothing is certain. All that can be given is a probability of what may happen but you can’t ever say that you know what will happen.

It’s tempting to think that the scientists have it wrong. The scientists themselves resisted the conclusions of their experiments for thirty years. However, experiment after experiment has not only supported the notion that uncertainty is intrinsic in nature but established the inverse relationships between each pairing of properties that enforces it. Physicists proved that we witness this uncertainty ourselves in our everyday experience but don’t realize it because it happens at sub-atomic scales. We’d have to perceive differences in velocity and position down to minutia the human eye can’t detect in order to see it. When you put something on a table, you may think you know where the object will go but you don’t. The object will rest on the table in one of a range of possible positions, each position having a different probability of being the one the object actually rests at.

So, nothing is pre-determined. Nothing is set in stone. No law, computation or reasoning can predict with certainty what someone will say, do or think. If the laws of physics could predict everything a person was destined to do exactly what was predicted then there would be no self-determination. I believe the uncertainty woven into the fabric of the universe is the expression of a simple law of existence: no matter the circumstances or the environment you are always free to choose your course through space and time. It is never pre-determined.