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Determinism and Its Implications

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The Demons of Science
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Abstract

Consider again Laplace’s Demon and his belief in metaphyscial determinism. In one fell swoop the Demon is able to survey the history of all particles—small and large—as trajectories in space-time. The Demon therefore ‘sees’ the whole vista of the universe, in its minutest detail, laid out like a map of events. For the Demon the future would not be as uncertain as it is for his human counterparts.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

Eddington, New Pathways in Science (1935: 105)

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Correspondence to Friedel Weinert .

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Weinert, F. (2016). Determinism and Its Implications. In: The Demons of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31708-3_11

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