When we toss a coin in the air, the chance that it will land “heads or tails” may be put at 50:50. That is a truly random phenomenon, which cannot be predicted. (Incidentally, when spinning, the coin is neither “heads” nor “tails”; dialectics – and the new physics – would say that it is both heads and tails.) As there are only two possible results, chance predominates. But matters change radically when very large numbers are involved. The owners of casinos, which are supposedly based on a game of “chance”, know that, in the long run, zero or double zero will come up as frequently as any other number, and therefore they can make a handsome and predictable profit. The same is true of insurance companies, which make a lot of money out of precise probabilities, which, in the last analysis, turn out to be practical certainties, even though the precise fate of individual clients cannot be predicted.

What are known as “mass random events” can be applied to a very wide field in physical, chemical, biological and social phenomena, from the sex of babies to the frequency of defects on a factory production line. The laws of probability have a very long history and have been used in the past in different spheres: the theory of errors (Gauss), the theory of accuracy in shooting (Poisson, Laplace), and above all, in statistics. For example, the “law of great numbers” establishes the general principle that the combined effect of a large number of accidental factors produces, for a very large class of such factors, results that are almost independent of chance. This idea was expressed in the beginning of the 18th century by Daniel Bernoulli, whose theory was generalised by Siméon Denis Poisson in 1837, and given its final form by Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev in 1867. All Heisenberg did was to apply the already known mathematics of mass-scale random events to the movements of subatomic particles, where, predictably, the element of randomness was quickly overcome.

Quantum mechanics having discovered precise and wonderful laws governing the probabilities, it is with numbers such as these that science overcomes its handicap of basic indeterminacy. It is by these means that science boldly predicts. Though now humbly confessing itself powerless to foretell the exact behaviour of individual electrons or photons or other fundamental entities, it can yet tell you with enormous confidence how such great multitudes of them must behave precisely.[18]

Out of apparent randomness, a pattern emerges. It is the search for such patterns, that is, for underlying laws, which forms the basis of the whole history of science. Of course, if we were to accept that everything is just random, that there is no causality, and that, anyway, we cannot know anything because there are objective limitations to our knowledge, then all will have been a complete waste of time. Fortunately, the whole history of science demonstrates that such fears are without the slightest basis. In the great majority of scientific observations, the degree of indeterminacy is so small that, for practical purposes, it may be ignored. At the level of everyday objects, the uncertainty principle proves to be absolutely useless. Thus, all the attempts to draw general philosophical conclusions from it, and apply it to knowledge and science in general, is simply a dishonest trick. Even at the subatomic level, it does not at all mean that we cannot make definite predictions. On the contrary, quantum mechanics makes very exact predictions. It is impossible to achieve a high level of certainty about the coordinates of individual particles, which may thus be said to be random. Yet, at the end of the day, out of randomness arises order and uniformity.

Accident, chance, contingencies, etc., are phenomena that cannot be defined solely in terms of the known properties of the objects under consideration. However, this does not mean that they cannot be understood. Let us consider a typical example of a chance event – a car accident. An individual accident is determined by an infinite number of chance events: if the driver had left home one minute later, if he had not turned his head for a split second, if he had been travelling ten miles an hour slower, if the old lady had not stepped into the road, etc., etc. We have all heard this kind of thing many times. The number of causes here is literally infinite. Precisely for that reason, the event is entirely unpredictable. It is accidental, and not necessary, because it might or might not have occurred. Such events, contrary to the theory of Laplace, are determined by so many independent factors that they cannot be determined at all.

However, when we consider a very large number of such accidents, the picture changes radically. There are regular trends, which can be precisely calculated and predicted by what are called statistical laws. We cannot predict an individual accident, but we can predict with great accuracy the number of accidents that will occur in a city over a period of time. Not only that, but we can introduce laws and regulations which have a definite impact on the number of accidents. Thus, there are laws that govern chance, which are just as necessary as the laws of causality themselves.

The real relationship between causality and chance was worked out by Hegel, who explained that necessity expresses itself through chance. A good example of this is the origin of life itself. The Russian biologist and biochemist Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin (1894-1980) explains how in the complex conditions of the early period of the earth’s history, the random movements of molecules would tend to form ever more complex molecules with all sorts of chance combinations. At a certain point, this huge number of accidental combinations gave rise to a qualitative leap, the emergence of living matter. At this point, the process would no longer be a matter of pure chance. Living matter would begin to evolve in accordance with certain laws, reflecting changing conditions. This relationship between the necessity and accident in science has been explored by David Bohm:

We see, then, the important role of chance. For given enough time, it makes possible, and indeed even inevitable, all kinds of combinations of things. One of those combinations which set in motion irreversible processes or lines of development that remove the system from the influence of the chance fluctuations is then eventually certain to occur. Thus, one of the effects of chance is to help ‘stir things up’ in such a way as to permit the initiation of qualitatively new lines of development.

Polemicising against the subjective idealist interpretation of quantum mechanics, Bohm shows conclusively the dialectical relationship between causality and chance. The existence of causality has been demonstrated by the whole history of human thought. This is not a question of philosophical speculation, but of practice and the never-ending process of human cognition:

The causal laws in a specific problem cannot be known a priori; they must be found in nature. However, in response to scientific experience over many generations along with the general background of common human experience over countless centuries, there have evolved fairly well defined methods for finding the causal laws. The first thing that suggests causal laws is, of course, the existence of a regular relationship that holds within a wide range of variations of conditions. When we find such regularities, we do not suppose that they have arisen in an arbitrary, capricious, or coincidental fashion, but, … we assume, at least provisionally, that they are the result of necessary causal relationships. And even with regard to the irregularities, which always exist along with the regularities, one is led on the basis of general scientific experience to expect that phenomena that may seem completely irregular to us in the context of a particular stage of development of our understanding will later be seen to contain more subtle types of regularity, which will in turn suggest the existence of deeper causal relationships.[19]

  1. Hoffmann, B. op. cit., p. 152.

  2. Bohm, D. op. cit., pp. 25 and 4.