Determinism

The determinism is a philosophical concept according to which each event is determined by a scientific Law of causality.

Definition

The determinism should not be confused with the Fatalisme nor with the Nécessitarisme. The necessitarism affirms the need for the phenomena under the terms of the law of causality, which makes that, the same causes producing the same effects, nothing arrives which is not necessary and which could not be predicted of any eternity. Such is the doctrines of Hobbes, Spinoza or Diderot, which agrees to deny the free will. If the necessitarism concerns the Philosophie primarily, the determinism concerns with the first chief science. One can define it as the need for the phenomena by the Law of causality, according to a physicomathematical law which founds the predictive character of the events. The distinction will be able to seem subtle, but what dissociates the determinism of the necessitarism basically, it is that the deterministic need is not a philosophical or speculative need, but a calculable need in fact, right or, at least, assumption. See the article Fatalisme on what the marking down of the determinism.

The regional determinism and the universal determinism are schematically distinguished. The determinism is regional which controls a finished number of elements (the system ball/shell is deterministic in this direction: once given the driving power of the powder, the angle of the gun compared to the horizontal one, the mass of the ball and the resistance of the air, one can calculate with a very high degree of accuracy the form and the duration of the trajectory like, consequently, the point of impact). The regional determinism does not raise any particular problem: it is a fact that many systems obey laws which make them necessary). Only the universal determinism, sometimes qualified “determinism Laplacian”, is problematic: can one regard the universe in his totality as a deterministic system?

The idea of the universal determinism was outlined the first time by the Baron d' Holbach in the Système of nature :

“ In a swirl of dust which raises an impetuous wind; whatever it appears in our eyes, in most dreadful Tempête excited by opposite winds which raise the floods, there is not only one Molécule dust or of water which is placed randomly, which does not have its sufficient cause to occupy the place where it is, and which does not act rigorously in the way in which it must act. A Geometrician which knows exactly the various forces which act in both cases, and the properties of the molecules which are driven, would show that, according to the causes given, each molecule acts precisely as it must act, and cannot act differently than it does not make ”.

D' Holbach is distinguished from the necessitarists such as Spinoza or Hobbes by affirming the calculability of the need. But it is with the Astronome and Mathématicien Pierre-Simon Laplace, that returns to have affirmed the universal determinism in all its rigor:

“ We must consider the state present of the universe like the effect of its former state, and as the cause of that which will follow. An intelligence which, for a given moment, knows all the forces whose nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings which compose it, if besides it were enough vast to subject these data to the analysis, would embrace in the same formula the movements of the more large body of the universe and those of the lightest atom: nothing would be dubious for it, and the future, like the past, would be present at its eyes. The human spirit offers, in the perfection which it knew to give to astronomy, a weak draft of this intelligence. Its discoveries in Mechanical and Geometry, united with those of the universal Gravity, put it at range to include/understand in the same analytical expressions the last and future states of the system of the world. While applying the same method to some other objects of its knowledge, he managed to bring back to general laws the phenomena observed, and to envisage those which the circumstances given must do to hatch. ”

Under the terms of the universal determinism, the intelligence which knows with an absolute precision the position and the energy of any object in the initial position could calculate the evolution of the universe constantly time. Determinism is in this case synonymous with predictibility. However, there exist nonprédictibles deterministic systems (see Théorie of chaos).

The social determinism is the model Sociologique which establishes the primacy of the company on the individual.

Limits

The assumption of the universal determinism controlled the science of the 19th century. It was called into question by modern physics to the 20th century:

  • by the Quantum physics, and more precisely, by the famous principle of uncertainty of Heisenberg (1927), who implies impossibility of knowing with an infinite precision the position and the momentum of a particle, contrary with the data required by the “genius” of Laplace; one can know them only using one function of probability. However, the determinism does not disappear completely in quantum physics, since these probabilities can be calculated exactly starting from the initial state of the system considered according to rigorously deterministic laws (for example, the equation of Schrödinger in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics).

However, contrary to the assumption of the traditional determinism, the Principe of uncertainty seems to imply that God plays dice with the Univers, which obeys free plan of the chance and the need. Albert Einstein affirmed on this subject: “ God does not play dice ”, it what Niels Bohr answered: “ Einstein, cease saying to God what it must do! ”. But the quantum physics would invalidate only the universal determinism: the regional determinism remains a principle of physical explanation impossible to circumvent for many phenomena.

However, some think that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle can of nothing invalidate the universal determinism. Because certainly, an intelligence interior with the universe will be probably never able to know exactly the state of the whole universe at a given moment, but that does not invalidate of anything the theory universal determinism, since the possibility of knowing the state of the universe is neither a prérequis nor a consequence necessary of the universal determinism.

The quantum physics are only one model empirical and statistics which describe the behavior of the particles and the radiations without anything to say of their intrinsic nature. As for the theory of chaos, it describes a nonprédictible deterministic system. These two theories contradict neither the law of causality nor the determinism.

In any event, the universal determinism is only one assumption. So that this one is proven, it would be necessary to be able to predict the evolution of the universe with an absolute precision, which is still not conceivable today, in particular because of the nonmeasurable character of a certain number of phenomena.

Besides the determinism should not be confused with the idea of predestination of the Jansénistes or Blaise Pascal, which is a purely theological idea, relating to less the series of the events that the safety or the reprobation of the heart after death.

Religion

In religion, the determinism is the equivalent of the Prédestination. It is a position defended by the calvinists and some other Protestants. The position anti-determinist is called the Pélagianisme.

The Catholic religion teaches a median position, which is that of Saint Augustin. She teaches that the grace is necessary to obtain safety. However, the grace must be accompanied by good works because a faith without works is a dead faith.

See too

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