God Dices

     The archeologist remarked that there was an ancient center of the old city marked by a Roman crossroads, which divided the city and the earth into four quadrants — the fulcrum of medieval geography. The roads had long ago disappeared, but at each corner of the crossroads had stood a Roman column which survives to the present day. As we made our way across the city to the very center of the ancient universe, my friend explained that the Roman columns stood in the interior of a modern building. Entering the building, I immediately saw the four columns. And there, between and around the columns, stood several pinball machines. Here, at the center of the universe, was the only pinball parlor in the old city of Jerusalem. I was amazed. According to the Bible the Lord speaks only to those who are ready for His message. The prophecy was not lost — I had seen a revelation of the God who plays dice.
     Major technologies often enter our civilization in an innocent and undemanding way. Some devices, which eventually become important material forces, first appear as toys. Gunpowder was first used for fireworks entertainment. The use of steam power in Hellenic Alexandria around A.D. 100 is another good example. The Greeks saw in Hero’s steam wheel only a toy, a novelty, but centuries later, steam engines would be used as the motive power for the first industrial civilizations. The Alexandrian Greeks were not ready for the idea.
     I think pinball machines are modern examples of such entertainment devices — they will eventually take us over. Determinists think of the universe as a huge clockwork; I think it is a pinball machine. Playing pinball requires total concentration, the right combination of skill and chance, a mastery of indeterminacy as the ball moves across the playboard and interacts with bumpers and cushions. The machine keeps score and you can cheat a little by shaking the machine, but not too much lest it tilt. It imitates life’s randomness, rewards skill, and creates an ersatz reality which integrates into the human nervous system in a remarkable way. Someday such machines will be combined with art forms such as films and a completely artificial reality will be created. We are already part of the pinball universe.
     It is no accident that pinball machines — the symbol of the indeterminate universe — stand at the center of the world. The quantum theory implies that to know the world we must observe it, and in the act of observation, uncontrolled and random processes are initiated in the world. Also, Bohr’s principle of complementarity implies that knowing everything at one time about the world — a requirement of determinism — is impossible because the conditions for knowing one thing necessarily exclude knowledge of others….
— Heinz R. Pagels, The Cosmic Code, “Randomness,” pp.102-103.