Quantum physics enables us to understand in a scientific way why there is not always an opposite. In western thought, mythology, and culture, opposites form the structure of understanding and belief. Binary thought is, in fact, such an ingrained habit that it is hard to conceptualise anything without conceiving at the same time of an opposite. This is the case even where we wish to resist such a concept. To the frustration of theorists, even binary and non binary remain imprisoned within the conceptual framework of binary opposition. Quantum theory offers a different path. It removes opposites, because for the most part it removes certainties. The position and movement of mostly undetectable tiny particles are calculated by means of probability. It is clearly impossible to have two uncertainties which oppose each other, because neither states a proposition. This is not just a trick of logic. If you toss a coin 100 times, the head/tail count may or may not come out at 50/50, but it will at any rate add up to 100. Proportionately, this will always remain the case. In probability, the total result must always be 100%, or one. A coin toss has two outcomes, so the split will be approximately half and half. With a dice, there are six sixths. In quantum physics, a tiny particle, which is undetectable, can be anywhere, so the probabilities of its movement and position are infinite, but in the event of detection all those probabilities still have the same sum of one. Two points may strike us. A single event has no opposite event. Preceding the event, it is not possible to say that any of the unknown positions are in opposition to each other, because any one may constitute the undetected event. The event itself is then also the vanishing of the event (because the particle is only momentarily detectable), which is then the event of further probability. In quantum science, there is therefore order and succession but no resolution or conflict. There is no violence. Detection is a flash, immediately succeeded by further chance. I have likened this to throwing a six in dice. Before it is rolled, a six is a probability. Once it has been rolled and read, it is picked up and vanishes, reverting to a further probability. Nothing else follows or can be deduced. In quantum science, as in dice, there is no binary order. Perhaps this is why Einstein observed of quantum science that God does not play dice. This is true indeed, as there is no devil to join the game.

Does this have any meaning in normal human existence? Perhaps it does. Quantum science is non binary because it deals purely in the calculation of probability. The human brain is a complex and little understood computer which is often, although not exclusively, preoccupied with probability. Probabilities, whether past or future, are imagined. In fact, they are wholly the subject of imagination. Stories are often formed by the collision of received binaries with imagined probabilities. When we are not engaged in -or controlled by – conflicted structures, the imagination of probability offers us a secret, non binary life.