Does God Play Dice? - 3:AM Magazine

How does the electron move then? It must exist in the atom. It must move in some way there. But more surprisingly, the textbooks of quantum mechanics provided no picture of the motion of the electron, and in fact, they did not tell us what electrons are at all. Moreover, I knew that the two great founders of the theory, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, did not agree on its meaning either. I was determined to search for the answer by myself. Then I started on a lonely journey to “trace” the elusive electron, until now. I simply want to know the answer of a naive question. I simply think on it continually. But the exploration has completely changed my life. It shapes my way through the world and finally makes me become a philosopher, or more accurately, a natural philosopher, who aims at understanding the mysterious universe. A more detailed story about this journey can be found in my little book God Does Play Dice with the Universe (2008).

For me, doing philosophy is not only a profession, but also, and more importantly, a way of life. Life is transitory. Everybody is a mere mote in the universe. Yet God, the universe, gives us minds, and thus we can know and understand His thoughts. The most happiness is not beyond this. As the great Chinese sage Confucius taught us in The Analects, “Hear the Tao in the morning, and it would be all right to die that evening.”