Q&A: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking
Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking
Question
Hello Rabbi,
You argued regarding will / free choice that if we are purely deterministic biological systems, then if we had two completely symmetrical options we would not be able to do anything, because that would violate a mathematical theorem. I wanted to challenge that claim (full disclosure: I don’t understand the first thing about mathematics or physics), but then I found out that there is spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics and in differential geometry: https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%AA_%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%94_%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA
https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13401?utm_source=chatgpt.com
(I apologize if I have spelling mistakes or if I’m unclear, and sometimes my understanding when I explain things isn’t so good — that happens to me sometimes.)
And one last question: can one argue that we have an indication that every deterministic system has a creator? At least part of our universe is deterministic, so that would imply there is a creator; even if there were random parts, I would infer it from the deterministic part.
Answer
Symmetry breaking requires a very special state and some kind of perturbation. In a completely symmetrical state, there is no symmetry breaking.