Title: Hard Determinism
Headings: Hard Determinism Explained
Hard Determinism Explained
Everything is predetermined and we have no free will
Arguments for hard determinism
What about quantum mechanics?
What about the feeling that we have free will?

Content: What about quantum mechanics? Determinism as an all-encompassing view of things received a severe blow in the 1920s with the development of quantum mechanics, a branch of physics dealing with the behavior of subatomic particles. According to the widely accepted model proposed by Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, the subatomic world contains some indeterminacy. For instance, sometimes an electron jumps from one orbit around its atom’s nucleus to another orbit, and this is understood to be an event without a cause. Similarly, atoms will sometimes emit radioactive particles, but this, too, is viewed as an event without a cause. Consequently, such events cannot be predicted. We can say that there is, say, a 90% probability that something will happen, meaning that nine times out of ten, a specific set of conditions will produce that happening. But the reason we can’t be more precise is not because we are lacking a relevant piece of information; it is just that a degree of indeterminacy is built into nature. The discovery of quantum indeterminacy was one of the most surprising discoveries in the history of science, and it has never been universally accepted.