Einstein's influence on modern science is by no means restricted to the general theory of relativity and his initial contribution to quantum mechanics. In fact, more than anything else, he addressed a fundamental question of a deep epistemological importance, namely:
whether nature is deterministic or whether it runs randomly wild as quantum mechanics appears to be.

In fact, quantum mechanics was regarded by Einstein until the end of his life as being incomplete. His famous aphorism "God doesn't play dice" is more or less the leitmotiv of Einstein's Symposium Part II to be held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

It is generally agreed amongst philosophers and historians of science that we have experienced three major revolutions which have fundamentally altered, and seemingly irrevocably, our understanding of what science is all about.

The first revolution was by Einstein's special and general relativity in which he questioned our traditional and cherished conception of the meaning of space and time and consequently matter.

The second revolution came about by Max Planck's discovery of the quantum and the subsequent formulation of quantum mechanics by Bohr, Heisenberg and Max Born. The changes brought about by quantum mechanics were even more radical than those of general relativity because it affected the very conception of causality, so that by comparison, relativity could be considered classical. The great Emanuel Kant would have been horrified had he seen the violation of causality experimentally verified with accuracy unprecedented in the entire history of science.

The third revolution came, as even a greater shock, by the discovery of deterministic chaos. The geometry of chaos is called fractals, a subject that was discovered by George Cantor and made well-known by Mandelbrot. Even the name of the subject hints already at great discrepancies – for how could chaos be deterministic? The science Chaos has touched, almost all branches of research, not only in physics but also in social sciences. It comes therefore as no surprise that Chaos research plays a significant role in fields as diverse as stock exchange as well as in the design of a perfect BMW clutch.

Today, we can say, with justifiable confidence, that Albert Einstein pointed in the right direction but gave the wrong answer. Nature does indeed play dice, but it knows all the rules of the game.

For all of these reasons, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has decided to host the Einstein Symposium Part II and devoted it to deterministic chaos. Notable scientists, who have discovered the basic concepts of this subject and who have in fact established a brand new science which goes under various names such as non-linear dynamics, complexity theory, chaos and fractals, have been invited and will be delivering keynote lectures as well as detailed introductory accounts of the various applications of this exciting new science.