The Assumption of Determinism

Hergenhahn states “a main goal of science is to discover lawful relationships, science assumes that what is being investigated is lawful”. Determinism operates under the assumption that something can be determined because it is operating under a set of laws. So we must operate under the assumption of determinism in order to better understand the world around us. Especial as Christian we are faced with the issue of wanting our faith and the faith that others to be of our choosing and not determined.

In many societies it was believed that everyone had a fate and many believed that this fate was either unavoidable or severe consequences would follow had you not gone with fates plan. This is amazing to me because in early societies even before social sciences had developed people had already started to form the ideas of determinism. Although external forces like events in peoples lives appearing to be out of their control people had still conceived that their was an order to the chaos that we live in. Thinking back through those old tales that I would have to read for English every time the theme was about defying fate it was as if it was a miracle of some kind a one in a million chance, but their were countless about the hopelessness of avoiding fate.

I feel like the issue is not backing up determinism because we are swimming in a sea of it but rather finding ways to support non-determinism. I liked the thoughts of William James on the topic of free will as he tried to deal with the over whelming evidence in favor of determinism that psychologist must face. James writes “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will…” What really gets me about this quote is the context of it prior to this James had not be productive and in a depressive state however following this James was extremely productive. I cannot say that I am on board with determinism but I do like indeterminism because it seems to me that there are limits in terms of method not to mention ethics to be fully either non-determinism or determinism.