Math in the News
John Horton Conway Tackles Free Will
March 27, 2009
John Horton Conway, Princeton University's John von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics, and colleague Simon B. Kochen have launched a public lecture series on their "Free Will Theorem."
"You want to know how the world works," Conway said. "There's this sense that the present state is somehow derived from the moment before it. We were trying to understand how it happens, and we suddenly realized there was no way of explaining successive states because the previous state could give rise to two different positions."
As Conway and Kochen, an expert in quantum mechanics, "were getting more and more into their free will discussions, sometimes they resembled two kids," Conway's wife, Diana, observed. "There were phone calls all day and evening, they'd rush to each other's offices and talk excitedly about whatever today's thought was."
The mathematicians packaged their arguments into a mathematical theorem that rests on three axioms. Now, they believe they can make their case to the public.
"It's not about theories anymore," Kochen claimed. "It's about what the universe does. And we've found that, from moment to moment, nature doesn't know what it's going to do. A particle has a choice."
"Given that John and Simon have been squeezing in work devising their Free Will Theorem between games of Go and tennis (respectively) for more than a decade, I should think they are very happy and relieved to now get it out into the world and generating debate," said Conway biographer Siobhan Roberts.
The lectures will take place on consecutive Monday evenings in Princeton's McDonnell Hall. The first lecture occurred on March 23, 2009, but five lectures remain in the series. And for those unable to attend, don't despair: You can listen to the lectures online or wait for the book.
Source: Princeton University, March 23, 2009.