Title: Principled Uncertainty
By: Ari K. Tuchman
Kodesh Press
This is the most unusual Torah-and-science book you’re likely to read.
Torah-and-science books tend to fall into two categories. The first uses the complexity of nature as a proof for intelligent design. (“How could the human eye – more complex than any camera – evolve naturally?” “Strawberry seeds – which are on the outside of the fruit – are designed to be ingested by animals in order to spread the seeds.”) The second category attempts to reconcile apparent differences of opinion between Torah and science. (“Science says the universe is 13 billion years old, not 6,000.” “The Torah completely ignores dinosaurs and cavemen.”) A sub-category of group two includes books that say, “The Torah says X, so science is wrong,” though those, thankfully, appear to be fewer and farther between.
Principled Uncertainty: A Quantum Exploration of Maimonides’ Perfect and Infinite G-d has a different goal, as well as a different approach.
The Rambam, in his Moreh Nevuchim (Guide for the Perplexed) and elsewhere, discusses much about the nature of G-d. However, since we are only human, and since only a small amount about G-d has been revealed, there are still going to be questions. For example, if the universe runs according to G-d’s immutable laws of nature, with certain miraculous deviations having been pre-programmed during the six days of Creation, then why do we pray with the expectation of achieving particular outcomes? And if prayer can in fact overcome the laws of nature, why should it be prohibited to pray for G-d to change the past? After all, that’s just another law of nature, isn’t it?
To address such apparent paradoxes, Ari K. Tuchman, an atomic physicist with experience at Yale and Stanford, engages examples from quantum mechanics, a discipline replete with paradoxes. But these paradoxes aren’t hypothetical like time travel’s grandfather paradox (in which a traveler kills his own grandfather before his father’s conception, thereby preventing his own birth). They’re real and they’re counterintuitive. Particles teleporting or appearing in multiple places simultaneously defies human logic, but that’s what happens in quantum mechanics, whether we understand it or not.
Full disclosure: I’m a geek. By that I mean that I read math theory books for fun. And, having a long career in kiruv, I have used metaphors from quantum mechanics in my presentations, to varying degrees of success. (I’ve referenced such things as the double-slit experiment, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – from which the current work no doubt derives its name – and spooky action at a distance, though never Schrödinger’s cat. Everyone knows that famous mind experiment, but Schrödinger’s point wasn’t that the cat is both dead and alive; his point was that saying that the cat is both dead and alive is a ridiculous conclusion.) Having trod this area as a lay person, I was curious as to how an actual scientist would use quantum phenomena to illustrate Torah concepts.
The results are as different as night and day.
Let us take our aforementioned questions regarding the efficacy – and the limits – of prayer. To address these theological quandaries, Tuchman introduces us to the concept of wavefunctions. There is a superposition of outcomes – all of them possible, though not all of them equally likely. Upon observation, these possible outcomes collapse to a single result. Once a wavefunction has collapsed, it doesn’t return to its previous state.
Perhaps this scientific reality can help us to better understand petitionary prayer. A situation has multiple possible outcomes. Maybe a patient will recover, but maybe he won’t. Maybe you’ll get a job for which you interviewed, but maybe you won’t. Maybe I’ll win the lottery, but it’s extremely likely that I won’t. When we pray, we’re asking G-d to actively observe, thereby collapsing the wavefunction into a single – occasionally unlikely – outcome. (For those familiar with the popular view of Schrödinger’s cat, this would be like G-d opening the box containing the superposition of states, thereby forcing the cat to be either dead or alive.)
When it comes to praying to change the past, the Talmud gives the example of a person who hears a scream and prays that it didn’t come from his home. Such a prayer is considered futile because it already happened – either it came from his home or it didn’t. In quantum terms, that wavefunction has already collapsed.
Of course, Tuchman’s treatment of this subject is far more detailed than my mere bullet points could hope to do justice.
There are four main sections to Principled Uncertainty. The first is a general introduction on scientific revelation. The second and third are in-depth analyses of theological concepts, including the aforementioned discussion of prayer based on quantum observation and a discussion of barriers – temporal, physical and spiritual – based on quantum tunneling, respectively. The final section is the famous story of Choni Hame’aggel (“Choni the Circle Drawer,” often referred to as “the Jewish Rip van Winkle”) from tractate Taanis, reinterpreted in light of the quantum mechanics concepts taught in the earlier sections. The latter, by far the shortest section in the volume, does an excellent job of illustrating how the quantum metaphors can be applied beyond the contexts in which they were initially introduced.
The reader must not be misled into thinking that the implication of these essays is that Chazal had Divine knowledge of quantum phenomena. It is possible, however, that they were able to intuit certain truths about the universe. The author skillfully illustrates this point through a Mishna in Kesubos about the division of property. The Sages of the Talmud were unable to explain the logic underlying Rabbi Natan’s opinion, though it was explained quite clearly by a 20th-century Nobel laureate using game theory. Rabbi Natan knew the what even if no one could explain the why. Similarly, Chazal and the Rambam may have understood certain counterintuitive realities whose explanations defied the terminology available to them. The use of quantum mechanics is intended as a useful metaphor for the modern reader.
Through this book, Ari K. Tuchman demonstrates how it’s possible to use the most cutting-edge aspects of modern science not to challenge the Torah’s narrative or to reject our mesorah, but to shed light on theological issues of relevance and import. Principled Uncertainty will surely take the Torah-and-science section of your home library to the next level.
