The Indeterminate Reality

“You lye, you are not sure; for I say, Woman, ’tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes“―Toby Guzzle, The Cobbler of Preston

The only certainty is uncertainty. From Socrates, we learn that our subjective experience cannot be fully trusted. What we see, what we perceive, is far from certain. This has been echoed not just philosophically but scientifically—through neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and beyond. A theme begins to emerge here, a universal principle that applies everywhere, to everything, but expresses itself in infinite ways. This diversity, this beauty, is what makes reality so remarkable. And how do we have this diversity? How did we get it? It springs from the indeterminacy woven into the very fabric of existence.

Since the early 1900s, with the birth of quantum mechanics, humanity’s understanding of the cosmos has undergone profound shifts. There have been moments throughout history where we’ve had to reorient ourselves in the universe—this was one of those times. And it came in the shadow of Albert Einstein’s revolutionary theories of general and special relativity, which had already redefined our understanding of space, time, and reality itself.

Relativity gave us a deterministic view of the cosmos. Everything in the universe, from the orbits of planets to the trajectory of comets, seemed predictable, determined by prior causes. This deterministic framework, which had guided humanity since Newton, told us that if we could know all the laws and initial conditions, we could predict everything that would ever happen—like a line of dominoes falling, one after the other.

This determinism, reinforced by Einstein’s theories, allowed us to predict celestial mechanics with incredible precision. It’s why we’ve been able to send astronauts to the moon, land probes on Mars, and track the paths of asteroids. The cosmos, in its grand, sweeping scale, appeared to follow a predictable, clockwork-like order.

But while we were getting better at predicting the vastness of the cosmos, something strange—something very strange—was happening in the smallest realms of reality. This is where quantum mechanics threw a wrench into the deterministic framework. Under the surface, things were not as they seemed. Reality, at its core, was far weirder and more counterintuitive than anyone expected.

Enter Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the principle of indeterminacy in quantum mechanics. It tells us that we cannot know certain pairs of properties—like the position and momentum of a particle—with arbitrary precision. The more precisely we know one, the less we can know the other. This is not a limitation of our tools or knowledge but a fundamental property of reality itself. Numerous experiments have confirmed this principle, making it a stable and undeniable facet of our external reality.

What does this mean? If we want to know a particle’s position with, say, fifty percent certainty, we can only know its momentum with fifty percent uncertainty—and vice versa. The more certain we are about one, the less certain we become about the other. This inherent uncertainty shattered the deterministic worldview. It changed everything we thought we knew about physics, the universe, and ourselves—and we are still grappling with its implications today.

But this uncertainty, this indeterminacy, is not something to fear. It is, in fact, the source of all the beauty and diversity in existence. It creates the “wiggle room” in reality—the space for creativity, spontaneity, and wonder to emerge. Yes, there have always been struggles in our history and unpleasant aspects of our world. But this wiggle room is also what drives us to create, to grow, and to eliminate the unpleasant. It is the space that allows us to forge something better.

“But I’m not a particle, and neither is a star!” you might say. And you’d be right. Larger systems, like stars or solar systems, do seem deterministic. Relativity helps us understand their motions and behaviors with incredible precision. In fact, the bigger the system, the more deterministic it appears. But even here, the wiggle room remains—it’s just harder to see.

This shows us something profound: we are not the only ones who live with uncertainty. The universe itself is uncertain, and this makes it our partner on the journey. If we align ourselves with the universe—its principles, its rhythms—not in a passive sense but by actively observing, thinking, and understanding what it’s showing us, we can navigate life with greater ease. By siding with the universe, by riding its waves, we can move forward with the flow of reality itself.

And while riding those waves, we might as well enjoy the beautiful sights around us—the infinite diversity and beauty reality has allowed. Why do I keep saying that? Why do I link indeterminacy to beauty? Because if everything were determined, there would be no wiggle room, no messiness, no complexity. Everything would be simple, ordered, and static. But we don’t see or experience that reality. The only thing we can be certain of is uncertainty—and it’s this uncertainty that makes all the richness of life possible.