Determinism [1/10]

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Determinism is the philosophical belief that every event or action is the inevitable result of preceding events and actions. Thus, in principle at least, every event or action can be completely predicted in advance, or in retrospect.

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Determinism [2/10]

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As a philosophical belief about the material world, determinism can be traced as least as far back as the time of Ancient Greece, several thousand years ago.

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Determinism [3/10]

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Determinism became incorporated into modern science around the year 1500 A.D. with the establishment of the idea that cause-and-effect rules completely govern all motion and structure on the material level.

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Determinism [4/10]

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According to the deterministic model of science, the universe unfolds in time like the workings of a perfect machine, without a shred of randomness or deviation from the predetermined laws.

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Determinism [5/10]

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The person most closely associated with the establishment of determinism at the core of modern science is Isaac Newton, who lived in England about 300 years ago.

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Determinism [6/10]

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Newton discovered a concise set of principles, expressible in only a few sentences, which he showed could predict the motion in an astonishingly wide variety of systems to a very high degree of accuracy.

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Determinism [7/10]

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Newton demonstrated that his three laws of motion, combined through the process of logic, could accurately predict the orbits in time of the planets around the sun, the shapes of the paths of projectiles on earth, and the schedule of the ocean tides throughout the month and year, among other things.

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Determinism [8/10]

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Newton's laws are completely deterministic because they imply that anything that happens at any future time is completed determined by what happens now, and moreover that everything now was completely determined by what happened at any time in the past.

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Determinism [9/10]

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Newton's three laws were so successful that for several centuries after his discovery, the science of physics consisted largely of demonstrating how his laws could account for the observed motion of nearly any imaginable physical process.

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Determinism [10/10]

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Although Newton's laws were superseded around the year 1900 by a larger set of physical laws, determinism remains today as the core philosophy and goal of physical science.

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