On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory

by Thomas Hertog

To Einstein, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics signaled that the theory was incomplete, that there had to be a deeper-lying framework that permitted an objectively real description of physical reality, regardless of any acts of observation. “The [quantum] theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One,” he wrote to Born. “I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.”[11] Niels Bohr, on the other hand, who had a background in philosophy as well as mathematics, had a profound intuition that quantum mechanics was consistent. Bohr took seriously the central tenet of quantum mechanics that observership—the very questions we ask of nature—affects how nature manifests itself. “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon,” he held.