REASONS FOR INADEQUACY OF LAPLACIAN DETERMINISM

We are now ready to see why the mechanistic determinism of Laplace does not appl
y if the notion of the
qualitative infinity of nature is correct. For this kind of determinism implies
that the laws of nature are such
as to permit the super-being of Laplace to know them in their totality. On the o
ther hand, according to the
point of view that we have been presenting, this is impossible.
First of all, let us recall that no matter how far one goes in the expression of
the laws of nature, the results
will always depend in an unavoidable way on essentially independent contingencie
s which exist outside the
context under investigation, and which are therefore undergoing chance fluctuati
ons relative to the motions
inside the context in question. For this reason, the causal laws applying inside
any specified context will
evidently not be adequate for the perfect prediction even of what goes on inside
this context alone.
Secondly, however, the essential independence of different contexts implies that
the processes taking
place within a given context cannot provide a complete and perfect reflection of
what goes on in the infinite
totality of possible contexts. For example, because of the cancellation of chanc
e fluctuations, the precise
details of atomic motions are not usually reflected to any significant extent in
the laws of the macroscopic
level. The laws of each new context must then, in general, be discovered with th
e aid of new kinds of
experiments, set up so as to create conditions in which the laws of the new cont
ext under investigation are
significantly reflected in the behaviour of the apparatus. Hence, even to know w
hat the totality of all the laws
of nature is, the super-being would have to do an infinity of different kinds of
experiments, each of which
would give results that depended significantly on the laws of a different contex
t, so that he could thereby
obtain the necessary information. In doing this, he would have to be able to dis
cover not only all the already
operating kinds of laws, but also all the new laws that are expressible only in
terms of the infinity of new
qualities, new entities, and new levels that are going to come into being, all t
he way into the infinite future.
It is evident, then, that if the Laplacian super-being resembles us to the exten
t of obtaining his knowledge
through a series of investigations of partial segments of the universe, and not,
for example, by Divine
revelation or by a priori intuitions which he finds by plumbing the depths of hi
s own mind, he will never be
able to predict the entire future of the universe or even to approach such a pre
diction as a limit, no matter
how good a calculator he may be. And if he did have such revelations or intuitio
ns, a calculation would
hardly be necessary, since the detailed prediction of the behaviour of the unive
rse would then require a
miracle only slightly greater than that by which he would learn the basic laws o
f the universe in the first
place.
108 CHARACTERISTICS OF A MECHANISTIC PHILOSOPHY
We see, then, that the behaviour of the world is not perfectly determined by any
possible purely

mechanical or purely quantitative line of causal connection. This does not mean,
however, that it is arbitrary.
For if we take any given effect, we can always in principle trace it to the caus
es from which its essential
aspects came. Only as we go further and further back into the past, we discover
three important points: viz.
first, that the number of causes which contribute significantly to a given effec
t increases without limit;
secondly that more and more qualitatively different kinds of causal factors are
found to be significant; and
finally, that these causes depend on new contingencies leading to new kinds of c
hance. For example, let us
consider an eclipse of the moon. Over moderate periods of time this is a fairly
precisely predictable event,
which is determined mainly by the co-ordinates and momenta of the earth and the
moon relative to the sun.
But the longer the time that we consider, the more precise this determination mu
st be, in order to make
possible a prediction of the effect with a given accuracy. For the details of th
e motion become very sensitive
to the precise initial conditions. As a result, perturbations arising from other
planets, from tides in the earth,
the moon, the sun, and still other essentially independent contingencies become
significant. Over long
enough periods of time, even the fluctuations arising from the molecular motions
could in principle come to
have significant effects; but before this could really become important, we shou
ld have gone so far into the
past as to reach the qualitatively different phase of the gaseous nebulae from w
hich the earth, moon, and sun
came. Here we see that the random motions of the gas molecules in these ne