Title: Determinism: Examples and Definition | Philosophy Terms
Headings: Determinism
Determinism
I. Definition
II. Types of Determinism
III. Determinism versus Free Will
IV. Controversies about Determinism
Does quantum mechanics necessarily mean that the universe is non-deterministic?
V. Quotes about Determinism
Quote #1:
Quote #2:
VI. Determinism in Pop Culture
Example #1: The Matrix
Example #2: Minority Report
VII. The History of Determinism
Quiz

Content: IV. Controversies about Determinism
Does quantum mechanics necessarily mean that the universe is non-deterministic? The laws of quantum mechanics (QM), the most thoroughly proven theory of all time, deny that specific events are predictable or determined at the quantum scale (smaller than an atom). According to QM, only the probabilities of events are determined, while specific events are random. Whether an atom will decay at a certain time, or where on a photographic plate a photon will hit, can never be predicted, no matter how much you know about previous events, except statistically. You can say approximately how many photons out of 100 will hit a certain spot, but not which ones. And the uncertainty is not just a matter of human knowledge; the photons do not follow specific paths, and have no specific locations, until they are observed, and there is no way to predict exactly where they will be. Most philosophers do not worry much about quantum theory because they have been told that it doesn’t matter at the human scale; although quantum events may be non-deterministic, their probabilities average out to give precisely the predictions of Newtonian physics for events much larger than atoms.