On the trail of scientific determinism

For centuries, science has developed under the influential assumption of scientific determinism, i.e. the assumption that the world is fully determined, that all phenomena are completely predetermined by natural laws, and that the future is, at least in principle, predictable with certainty. This worldview still shapes scientific research today, particularly in the natural sciences. The book examines it both from a systematic and from a historical perspective. From a systematic perspective, it will be necessary to distinguish between different forms of scientific determinism, which are more or less verifiable and have more or less bold explanatory claims: For example, would determinism apply to all phenomena, so that we humans would be predetermined in our actions by natural laws as well, and would not be free in any substantial sense? Would determinism only apply to physical phenomena? Are biological phenomena fully reducible to physical ones, then? Would determinism only apply to models of phenomena, which depict reality only partially? And what would be the opposite of scientific determinism? Indeterminism: the idea that there are genuinely random phenomena, i.e. phenomena that are unpredictable in principle, and not just due to some lack of knowledge? Or probabilism: the idea that phenomena indeed obey natural laws, but that these laws have only a statistical character? From a historical perspective, the book challenges the standard narrative of the history of scientific determinism. This narrative tells us that determinism originated in the development of classical physics, reached its peak in the early 19th century, and was refuted with the emergence of quantum physics. But why did the concept of scientific determinism only emerge in the second half of the 19th century, then? And how? It happened in the context of public debates in which scientists participated as public actors. Being for or against determinism was related to worldview and political questions, such as which national scientific communityGerman, French, or Englishwas the most advanced; whether nature allows for divine intervention; whether conservative, liberal, or socialist values should shape the education system, etc. What is fascinating about this highly complex history is precisely the interplay between science and the public, as well as the transdisciplinary nature of these debates, which involved philosophers, physicists, physicians, mathematicians, biologists, and theologians all of them struggling for a true and shared understanding of the world in which we live.