In the late 1920s, Einstein and Bohr engaged in a series of famous debates about the future of physics, in which Einstein insisted that “God does not play dice with the universe.” “Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Bohr replied. Einstein lost the argument and his career as a productive scientist largely ended after that.
The debate apparently revolved around quantum mechanics and whether what we can know about subatomic particles is absolute or simply a function of probability. But at a deeper level it challenged a basic philosophical principle that had existed since before Plato or Aristotle: that essence precedes existence.
If essence precedes existence, then there is a plan for us, we have a destiny. But if God plays dice with the universe (the possibility Einstein suggested), then we are free to make our own plans and follow our own path. There is no order or script waiting to be followed, no hidden plan. The only way forward is to rebel, seek new possibilities and create meaning in our own way.
Stockdale’s paradox and the confrontation with an indifferent universe
Admiral James Stockdale was undoubtedly an American hero. The highest-ranking American military officer at the Hanoi Hilton prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War was brutally and repeatedly tortured. However, he never broke faith. Instead, he became a symbol of resistance and an inspiration to his men.
When asked about those who faltered, Stockdale said: “The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’ll be out for Christmas.’
That, in essence, is Stockdale’s paradox: you need to accept the underlying truth of an indifferent universe before you can assert your power over it. Once you fall into the trap of believing that some outside force will come to save you or that fate will somehow act in your favor, you are cooked.
Acceptance is not surrender. This is how you begin to master and transcend your circumstances.
To wit, when asked how he endured 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela often cited the poem. Invictus as your source of strength. The author, William Ernest Henley, wrote it while recovering from a leg amputation at the age of 16, putting his faith not in fate or providence, but in what he called “my invincible soul.”
That’s what French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre meant when he coined the phrase “existence precedes essence.” We need to accept our circumstances as they are, but determine their meaning for ourselves. Or, as Mandela often quoted Invictus: “I am the owner of my destiny: I am the captain of my soul.”
Open to the possibility
Einstein operated based on faith. He firmly believed that there was an underlying order to the universe, that essence preceded existence. Bohr, on the other hand, was willing to follow the data wherever it led and accept it at face value. He didn’t really understand how it worked (no one did at the time), but he accepted what the evidence suggested.
What was at stake were two ideas in particular. The first was quantum superposition, the principle that particles can exist in a strange combination of multiple states at the same time. The second was quantum entanglement, which holds that the behavior of one particle can be perfectly correlated with another, even when that behavior is inherently unpredictable, which Einstein dismissed as “spooky action at a distance.”
These are difficult ideas to accept because they go against what we experience in normal life. Everyday physical objects do not simply appear and disappear, nor do they start flying in one direction for no particular reason. Einstein, who certainly did not lack imagination, could never accept them and devised an experiment, called the EPR paradox, to refute them.
However, before long these improbable ideas began to appear in practical technologies, such as transistors and lasers. Today we live in a world of visceral abstraction, where ideas that few understand govern our lives in ways we barely notice. The quantum effects of superposition and entanglement make everything from smartphones to supermarket payment systems possible.
The EPR experiment, by the way, was successfully carried out at IBM in 1993 and paved the way for a new era of quantum computing that is only now beginning to develop.
Existential rebellion
Einstein believed in the essence of an ordered universe. As a scientific but spiritual man, that was paramount for him. Bohr, on the other hand, embraced the world as he found it. Sure, a universe governed by probabilities instead of certainties was disturbing, but it’s where all the evidence pointed. He established existence before attempting to discern essence.
That is the nature of what the French writer Albert Camus called existential rebellion. He compared the human condition to Sisyphus, the mythical Greek king condemned to roll a rock up a hill, only to watch it roll down, for eternity. Incredibly, Camus imagines Sisyphus, returning to his work at the foot of the mountain, happy, having found meaning in his task.
While Einstein started from certain assumptions about the universe, Bohr proposed the truth without knowing in advance what it would imply. The practical advances that emerged from his work and that of his colleagues were still decades away. However, he persevered and continued his journey no matter where it took him.
Many large companies start inauspiciously. At first, IBM sold meat slicers and time clocks. Sony started out as a failed rice cooker manufacturer. Hewlett-Packard started out making wacky gadgets like automatic toilet flushers and a machine that delivered electric shocks to people to help them lose weight.
Like Sisyphus, the founders of these companies needed to find meaning in the mundane. As Kevin Ashton, who came up with the idea of RFID chips, explained, in How to fly a horse: “Creation is a long journey,” he wrote, “where most of the turns are wrong and most of the endings are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is give up.”
Innovation needs exploration
When Steve Jobs came up with the idea of a device that could hold “a thousand songs in my pocket,” it wasn’t technically feasible. There was simply no hard drive available that could hold so much storage in so little space. However, within a few years, a supplier developed the necessary technology and the iPod was born.
Note how most of the profit went to Apple, which designed the product and experience, and relatively little to the supplier who developed the technology that made it possible. This is because the technology for developing hard drives was very well known. If it hadn’t been that supplier, someone else would eventually have developed what Jobs needed. The iPod, however, was something new, different and especially adapted to its time.
To explore, you must first accept your own ignorance. It has little to do with intelligence or diligence. Einstein is revered today because he broke new ground. But he was diminished by where he was unwilling to go and became, in the words of Robert Oppenheimer, “a landmark, not a beacon.”
That’s why innovation requires exploration. If you don’t explore, you won’t discover. If you don’t discover, you won’t invent. And if he does not invent, he will be disturbed. But to be an effective explorer, you need to let go of assumptions. Purpose is not something you start with, it is what you find on your journey.
And yet, venturing out without knowing what you will find requires existential rebellion, because without knowing what you will find, you need the journey itself to sustain you. Not all who wander are lost.