determinism
Determinism is the view that every event, including every human choice, is fully fixed by the causes that came before it, so that nothing could have happened otherwise.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Definitions
- In philosophy: the doctrine that every event and every act of will is the necessary result of earlier causes, which leaves no room for free will in the strong sense of being able to choose otherwise.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - In science and mathematics: the property of a system or model in which the same starting state always leads to exactly the same later state, with no element of chance.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - In social and historical writing: the claim that one factor, such as genes, geography, technology or the economy, decides how people or societies develop; often used as a criticism of an argument that is too simple.
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Examples
- The lecture asked whether determinism leaves any room for moral responsibility.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Classical mechanics was long seen as the model of strict determinism.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - The reviewer accused the author of technological determinism, as if the printing press alone had changed Europe.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - She rejected genetic determinism and argued that upbringing matters at least as much as inheritance.
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Usage
Determinism is mainly a term of philosophy and science, but it also turns up in everyday debate whenever people wonder whether they really choose their own lives. It is often preceded by a word naming the deciding cause: causal, biological, genetic, geographical, economic, technological or historical determinism. That first word tells you which factor is said to settle the outcome. When a critic says a book suffers from determinism, the point is usually that the author has reduced a complicated story to one single cause.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Webster (1913) labels determinism as a term of metaphysics and defines it as the doctrine that the will is not free, but is inevitably and invincibly determined by motives. The same dictionary records determinist as a noun for one who believes in determinism, and also as an adjective, as in determinist theories. Its illustrative quotation comes from the writer Frances Power Cobbe, who contrasts the courage given by religious conviction with what she calls scientific physical determinism.
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Editorial team; facts: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourceThe root idea is a boundary. Webster gives as the first sense of determine to fix the boundaries of, to mark off and separate, and quotes the Book of Acts, where God hath determined the times before appointed. Later senses move from drawing limits to settling a question and to deciding a course of action. Determinism takes the word one step further: everything that happens has already had its limits drawn by what came before.
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Editorial team; facts: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourceThe noun often goes with strict, hard, soft, causal and naive, and people accept, reject, defend or argue against it. A supporter of the view is a determinist, and a model in which the same input always gives the same output is called deterministic. Keep determinism apart from fatalism. A fatalist believes certain things will happen whatever we do, while a determinist holds that what we do is itself one link in the chain of causes. The opposite position, that some events are not fixed in advance, is indeterminism.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Word forms
Regular English noun, usually uncountable; the plural determinisms is rare and refers to different versions of the doctrine.
word forms
| przypadek | forma |
|---|---|
| singular | determinism |
| plural | determinisms |
Word forms: Editorial team
Collocations
- causal determinism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - hard determinism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - genetic determinism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - technological determinism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - free will and determinism
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Synonyms · Antonyms
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Etymology
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourcealso
W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourceRelated words
- determinist , noun and adjective
- determine , base verb
- determination , noun from the same verb
- predetermine , same Latin root
- term , same Latin root, terminus
Related entries
The same entry in Polish: determinizm
Questions and answers
What does determinism mean?
Determinism is the view that everything that happens, human decisions included, is the necessary result of earlier causes, so that given the same past nothing could have turned out differently.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)How did older dictionaries define determinism?
Webster (1913) files it under metaphysics and explains it as the teaching that human will is not free but is always and irresistibly settled by motives. It also records determinist for a person who holds this view.
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourceWhere does the word determinism come from?
It rests on the verb determine, which came through French déterminer from Latin determinare, to set limits, from terminus, a boundary. Skeat places determine in the same family as term, terminal and exterminate.
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W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourceIs determinism the same as fatalism?
No. A fatalist believes some outcomes will come about no matter what we do, while a determinist says our actions are themselves caused and are part of the chain that produces the outcome.