ZYGO Zygon® 0591-2385 1467-9744 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2003.00548.x Is our Universe Deterministic? Some Philosophical and Theological Reflections on an Elusive Topic Smedes Taede A. 02 12 2003 38 4 10.1111/zygo.2003.38.issue-4 955 979

Abstract. The question of whether or not our universe is deterministic remains of interest to both scientists and theologians. In this essay I argue that this question can be solved only by metaphysical decision and that no scientific evidence for either determinism or indeterminism will ever be conclusive. No finite being, no matter how powerful its cognitive abilities, will ever be able to establish the deterministic nature of the universe. The only being that would be capable of doing so would be one that is at once transcendent and immanent. Such a being is compatible with the God of the Christian tradition, which yields that a deterministic worldview is compatible with (yet does not necessarily lead to) a deterministic worldview. A more important point is that because science is never able to establish the determinism of our universe, it can never definitely rule out divine action except on metaphysical grounds.

 chaos theory determinism divine action John Dupré immanence indeterminism logical possibility metaphysics physical possibility Wesley Salmon transcendence Audi, Robert ed. 1995. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press. Ayer, Alfred J.1973. The Central Questions of Philosophy. London : Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Barbour, Ian. 2002. Nature, Human Nature, and God. Minneapolis : Fortress. Barrow, John, and FrankTipler. 1986. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Broer, Henk, and FlorisTakens. 1992. “Wegen naar Chaos en Vreemde Aantrekking: een fenomenologische benadering  .”In Wegen naar Chaos en Vreemde Aantrekking: een fenomenologische benadering., ed. HenkBroer and FerdinandVerhulst. Utrecht , Netherlands : Epsilon Uitgaven. Cahn, S. M.1995. “Fatalism  .”In Fatalism., ed. JaegwonKim and ErnestSosa, 168–70. Oxford : Blackwell. Çambel, A. B.1993. Applied Chaos Theory: A Paradigm for Complexity. Boston : Academic. Cartwright, Nancy. 1999. The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press. Chalmers, Alan. 1999. What Is This Thing Called Science?  3d ed. Buckingham : Open Univ. Press. Clayton, Philip. 1997. God and Contemporary Science. Edinburgh : Edinburgh Univ. Press. Colwell, Jason. 2000. “Chaos and Providence. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion  48: 131–38. Davies, Paul. 1989. The Cosmic Blueprint. London : Unwin. Derksen, A. A.1996. Wetenschap of Willekeur: Wat is wetenschap?  Muiderberg , Netherlands : Coutinho. Dray, William. 1967. “Determinism in History  .”In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. PaulEdwards, 373–78. New York and London : Macmillan. Drees, Willem B.1990. Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God. LaSalle , Ill. : Open Court. Dupré, John. 1993. The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge , Mass., and London : Harvard Univ. Press. Dupré, Louis. 1993. Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture. New Haven and London : Yale Univ. Press. Earman, John. 1986. A Primer on Determinism. Dordrecht , Netherlands : D. Reidel. Eigen, Manfred, and RuthildWinkler. 1982. Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. London : Allen Lane. Funkenstein, Amos. 1986. Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press. Ganoczy, Alexandre. 1995. Chaos‐Zufall‐Schöpfungsglaube: Die Chaostheorie als Herausforderung der Theologie. Mainz , Germany : Matthias‐Grünewald‐Verlag. Grant, Edward. 1996. The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press. Haught, John. 2000. God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution. Boulder : Westview. Hawking, Stephen. 1988. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. London : Bantam. Honderich, Ted, ed. 1995. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Hume, David. [1748] 1999. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Ed. T. L.Beauchamp. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Kanitscheider, Bernulf. 1997. “Die Feinabstimung des Universums und die Existenz von Leben, ein Rätsel der Kosmologie?”  In Die Feinabstimung des Universums und die Existenz von Leben, ein Rätsel der Kosmologie?, ed. W. G.Saltzer, P.Eisenhardt, D.Kurth, and R. E.Zimmerman, 29–44. Frankfurt a.M./Leipzig , Germany : Insel Verlag. Kauffman, Stuart. 1993. The Origins of Order: Self‐organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Kauffman, Stuart. 1995. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self‐organization and Complexity. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Kauffman, Stuart. 2000. Investigations. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Kellert, Stephen H.1993. In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems. Chicago and London : Univ. of Chicago Press. Leslie, John. 1989. Universes. London : Routledge. Lewin, Roger. 1992. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos. New York : Macmillan. Livio, Mario. 2000. The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos. New York : John Wiley. Lorenz, Edward N.[1993] 1995. The Essence of Chaos. London : UCL. Lovejoy, Arthur O.1936. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge , Mass., and London : Harvard Univ. Press. Lucas, John R.1961. “Mind, Machines and Gödel. Philosophy  36: 112–27. Available at http://users.ox.ac.uk/jrlucas/mmg.html Lucas, John R. n.d.“A Simple Exposition of Gödel's Theorem  .”Available at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/simplex.html Lucas, John R.1970. The Freedom of the Will. Oxford : Clarendon. Monod, Jacques. 1972. Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. London : Collins. Nagel, Ernest. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. London : Routledge and Kegan Paul. Nagel, Ernest, and James R.Newman. 1959. Gödel's Proof. London : Routledge and Kegan Paul. Peacocke, Arthur. 1979. Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures 1978. Oxford and New York : Clarendon. Peacocke, Arthur. [1990] 1993. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming—Natural, Divine, and Human. Enlarged ed. London : SCM Press. Peacocke, Arthur. 2001. Paths from Science towards God: The End of All Our Exploring. Oxford : Oneworld. Peitgen, Heinz‐Otto, HartmutJürgens, and DietmarSaupe. 1992. Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science. New York : Springer. Petzold, Charles. 1999. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. Redmond , Calif. : Microsoft. Polkinghorne, John. 1998. Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven and London : Yale Univ. Press. Polkinghorne, John. 2000. Faith, Science and Understanding. New Haven and London : Yale Univ. Press. Polkinghorne, John, ed. 2001. The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis. Grand Rapids , Mich. : Wm. B. Eerdmans, and Cambridge: SPCK. Popper, Karl. 1982. The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism. Totowa , N.J. : Rowman and Littlefield. Poundstone, William. 1991. Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge. London : Penguin. Rucker, Rudy. 1995. Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite. Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press. Sainsbury, Mark. 2001. Logical Forms: An Introduction to Formal Logic. 2d ed. Oxford : Blackwell. Salmon, Wesley C.1998. Causality and Explanation. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Saunders, Nicholas. 2002. Divine Action and Modern Science. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press. Scientific American. 2001. 284: 1. Sklar, Lawrence. 1995. “Determinism  .”In Determinism., ed. JaegwonKim and ErnestSosa, 117–19. Oxford : Blackwell. Smith, Peter. 1998. Explaining Chaos. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press. Smolin, Lee. 1997. The Life of the Cosmos. Oxford and New York : Oxford Univ. Press. Stewart, Ian. 1997. Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos. 2d ed. London : Penguin. Suppes, Patrick. 1984. Probabilistic Metaphysics. Oxford : Basil Blackwell. Taylor, Richard. 1966. Action and Purpose. Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice Hall. Taylor, Richard. 1967a. “Causation  .”In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. PaulEdwards, 56–66. New York and London : Macmillan. Taylor, Richard. 1967b. “Determinism  .”In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. PaulEdwards, 359–73. New York and London : Macmillan. Taylor, Richard. 1992. Metaphysics. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice Hall. Toulmin, Stephen. 1953. The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction. London : Hutchinson Univ. Library. Van denBrom, Luco J.1990. Creatieve Twijfel: Een studie in de wijsgerige thelogie. Kampen , Netherlands : Kok. Van denBrom, Luco J.1993. Divine Presence in the World: A Critical Analysis of the Notion ofDivine Omnipresence. Kampen , Netherlands : Kok Pharos. Van denBrom, Luco J.1995. “God en onze puzzel van de wereld  .”In God en onze puzzel van de wereld., ed. A.van deBeek, 51–73. Nijkerk , Netherlands : Callenbach. Verhulst, Ferdinand. 2000. Nonlinear Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems. 2d ed. New York : Springer. Ward, Keith. 1996. God, Chance and Necessity. Oxford : Oneworld. Weatherford, Roy. 1991. The Implications of Determinism  . London and New York : Routledge. Wildiers, N. Max.1973. Wereldbeeld en teologie. Van de middeleeuwen tot vandaag. Antwerpen , Belgium/Amsterdam, Netherlands : Standaard Wetenschappelijke Uitgeverij. Wildiers, N. Max.1988. Kosmologie in de Westerse cultuur.  Historisch‐kritisch essay. Kapellen , Netherlands : Pelckmans, and Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Agora. Wildman, Wesley J., and Robert J.Russell. 1995. “Chaos: A Mathematical Introduction with Philosophical Reflections  .”In Chaos: A Mathematical Introduction with Philosophical Reflections., ed. Robert J.Russell, NanceyMurphy, and Arthur R.Peacocke, 49–90. Vatican City State : Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley Calif.: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Williams, Garnett P.1997. Chaos Theory Tamed. London : Taylor and Francis.