Is the universe fundamentally predictable or unpredictable? Does the degree to which the future remains unknown reflect our own cognitive limitations, or the fundamentally open structure of reality? Earlier this week a remarkable panel comprising of Lee Smolin, Francesca Vidotto and John Vervaeke debated these questions during an IAI Live event, streamed in real time from the Institute of Art and Ideas in London. The universe, the panelists agreed, is a place of constant change and surprise, and its future remains fundamentally open. 

Arguably the success of the natural sciences, physics in particular, is measured in terms of its predictive powers. Even quantum mechanics, a theory that challenged the deterministic picture of reality, still makes predictions, albeit probabilistic ones, with great accuracy – the greatest of any theory so far. But is this idea that reality has a certain order, that the future will resemble the past, and that we are capable of identifying the patters that help us navigate time true? Or is reality and the future radically open, unpredictable, and capable of surprising us?