indeterminism
Sign in to saveIndeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or are not caused deterministically.
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Article
30 sectionsContents
- Necessary but insufficient causation
- Probabilistic causation
- Intrinsic indeterminism versus unpredictability
- Philosophy<!--'Chance (philosophy)' redirects here-->
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Leucippus
- Aristotle
- Pyrrhonism
- Epicureanism
- Early modern philosophy
- Modern philosophy
- Charles Peirce
- Arthur Holly Compton
- Karl Popper
- Robert Kane
- Mark Balaguer
- Science
- Mathematics
- Classical and relativistic physics
- Boltzmann
- Evolution and biology
- Prigogine
- Quantum mechanics
- Cosmology
- Neuroscience
- Other views
- See also
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or are not caused deterministically.
It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical problem of free will, particularly in the form of metaphysical libertarianism. In science, most specifically quantum theory in physics, indeterminism is the belief that no event is certain and the entire outcome of anything is probabilistic. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the "Born rule", proposed by Max Born, are often starting points in support of the indeterministic nature of the universe. Indeterminism is also asserted by Sir Arthur Eddington, and Murray Gell-Mann. Indeterminism has been promoted by the French biologist Jacques Monod's essay "Chance and Necessity". The physicist-chemist Ilya Prigogine argued for indeterminism in complex systems.