The Art of Tetman Callis

“The discovery that individual events are irreducibly random is probably one of the most significant findings of the twentieth century. Before this, one could find comfort in the assumption that random events only seem random because of our ignorance. For example, although the brownian motion of a particle appears random, it can still be causally described if we know enough about the motions of the particles surrounding it. Thus, as Werner Heisenberg put it, this kind of randomness, of a classical event, is subjective. But for the individual event in quantum physics, not only do we not know the cause, there is no cause. The instant when a radioactive atom decays, or the path taken by a photon behind a half-silvered beam-splitter are objectively random. There is nothing in the Universe that determines the way an individual event will happen. Since individual events may very well have macroscopic consequences, including a specific mutation in our genetic code, the Universe is fundamentally unpredictable and open, not causally closed.” – Anton Zeilinger, “The message of the quantum”