Science Quote by Heinz R. Pagels

Pagels compresses a century of physics into one brutal image swap: from a clock, the Enlightenment’s favorite metaphor for a lawful universe, to a pinball machine, all ricochets, bumpers, and surprise drains. The line works because it doesn’t merely say “we found randomness.” It tells you what got demoted: the comforting belief that the cosmos runs on a serene, master-designed geartrain where knowing the parts guarantees the future. A clock flatters the intellect. A pinball machine mocks it.

The intent is partly corrective and partly cultural. In the wake of quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and the limits of measurement, physicists learned that prediction has ceilings that aren’t just practical but structural. Even when equations are exact, outcomes can hinge on tiny, untrackable differences. “Contingency” signals more than chance; it’s dependence on conditions, on history, on the particular shove the ball got a moment ago. You can model the table, but you can’t narrate the entire game in advance.

The subtext lands on human psychology: determinism offered moral and political reassurance, the sense that progress, markets, or empires followed an inevitable script. Pagels implies that script is a projection. The pinball metaphor also sneaks in an ethics of humility. You don’t control the machine; you respond, you adapt, you play within constraints. Coming from a physicist who wrote for broader audiences, it’s a sly warning against turning science into theology: modern physics doesn’t crown certainty, it institutionalizes doubt.