Game Theory in a Literary Setting

Abstract

The studies of Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) in Switzerland, Werner Heisenberg (1901–76) in Holland, and Paul Dirac (1902–84) in England seeded the atomic paradigm with ambiguity. “No longer did tiny particles have a definite position and speed,” explains the physicist Stephen Hawking (1942–). “Instead, the more accurately one determined a particle’s position, the less accurately could one determine its speed, and vice versa” (24–26). Heisenberg subsequently stated this conundrum in rigorous mathematical terms. “The uncertainty in the position of a particle times the uncertainty in its momentum,” summarizes Hawking, “must always be larger than Planck’s constant, which is a quantity that is closely related to the energy content of one quantum of light” (42). The German- born physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was loath to accept Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle because an indeterministic interpretation of quantum physics undermined the universal application of general relativity, Einstein’s revolutionary theory from 1915. “Quantum mechanics,” as Einstein termed Heisenberg’s hypothesis, “is certainly imposing,” he admitted to his compatriot Max Born (1882–1970) in 1926. “But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing.

Nothing, in effect, can be grounded on chance—the calculation of chances, strategies—that does not involve at the outset a limited structuring of the situation.

—Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (40)

Before turning to those mortal and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (19)