"...He is not playing at dice."

Posted by ESC on September 14, 2004

In Reply to: Apparently, She does. posted by Bob on September 14, 2004

: : This quote is attributed to Albert Einstein, who was troubled by developments in physics which increasingly pointed to a more indeterminate universe. With the outcome of experiments becoming more an array of statistical ranges rather than clear and definitive solutions ..... he made this statement. Science, and philosophy, has now moved in this direction, and it seems that dice is the universal game.

: Quite so. Quantum physics seems increasingly to say that there is randomness everywhere. It will, however, take mankind a few millennia to get over the notion that there's a Big Dad in the Sky, watching over us. For all of us who find that creepy, there are a hundred who find it comforting.

GOD DOES NOT PLAY DICE -- "Albert Einstein once noted in a letter to George Seldes, 'Many things which go under my name are badly translated from the German or are invented by other people.' The physicist said this to explain his suggested deletion from Seldes's quotation collection of, among other things, his famous observation that 'there is no hitching post in the universe.' This was said to have been Einstein's response to a reporter's request for a one-line summary of his theory of relativity. Einstein didn't delete 'God does not play dice,' the bumper-stickered version of his 1926 observation, 'I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.'" From "Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations" by Ralph Keyes (HarperPerennial, 1993).

• "...He is not playing at dice." Smokey Stover 15/September/04