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Book Reviews
God does not play dice
by David A. Shiang
Pustak Mahal, New Delhi, India, 2008
Complete Title: God does not Play Dice: The Fulfillment of Einstein’s Quest for Law & Order in Nature.
There comes a strange point in every Scientist’s life when ‘Metaphysics’ becomes the primary interest. If the scientist is able to attract an audience, they open up an interesting discussion. Else, they retire into oblivion in this direction. Incidentally, during these discourses, ‘GOD’ apparently forms the ‘SATANIC TEMPTATION’, enticing the scientists to accept, putting it in the words of David A Shiang (DAS), the presence of ‘a designer that is superior to the Scientist’. Both Albert Einstein & DAS fall for this ‘satanic temptation of God’, coming up with contradictory statements like “God does not play dice” … and … “God’s dice are always loaded”.
Coming to the book ‘God does not play dice…’, per se, DAS does a commendable job and reaches a brilliant crescendo halfway through (Chapter 5) the book when he takes on Resnick & Halliday’s equation for entropy “S=k log w”. Dwelling upon this equation, DAS goes on to prove ‘S = zero’. At this spot, he comes treacherously close to both Jiddu Krishnamutri’s “Theory of Creative Void” and T Kashinath’s “The idea of Nothingness or Shunyata” concepts, before steering clear of either of the concepts to interpret S = 0 as ‘there never was any “disorder” to begin with’. Cool. Not surprisingly, after some more brilliant statements, viz., “…you cannot affect the future…”, “…God’s dice are always loaded…” to questioning the readers by asking “…A designer that is superior to the Scientist?” DAS loses most of the punch in his arguments for the rest of the book. Subsequently, DAS does a blunt volte-face when he meekly falls in tune with Einstein’s more popular “God does not play dice”, failing to explain how? - a major negative point of this book.
Presented in about 110 pages (as eight chapters) and two appendices, most of the arguments/discourses are good. However, at places one fails to get connection among various arguments, making us feel that this is a cut-and-paste shorter version of a more larger discourse (particularly chapters 6 & 7) (or did I fail to transcend to the levels of DAS’s thinking?).
As mentioned earlier, many-a-time, the three letters ‘GOD forms a satanic temptation’ during metaphysical discussions. Put simply, God & Satan are two faces of the same coin – only one side shows at a time, forcing me to say that if you toss the coin, whichever face shows up becomes your fate for the moment (definition of luck?). Accept it. Thus, if God doesn’t play dice with the universe, Satan does… (Pun intended!). Nevertheless, this book is worth reading once…
Review by DrPoduri
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