One of the great debates in this history of philosophy (eventually evolving into science and social science) has been between determinism and indeterminism.
Determinists argued that all other things being equal, a given cause will inevitably lead to a determined effect. Whereas, indeterminists argued that there is no necessary connection between cause and effect. The debate can be taken back all the way to the ancient Greeks. For example, when Epicurus argued that atoms do not fall in a straight line he was introducing a degree of indeterminacy in the atomic theory of Democritus.
However, support for indeterminacy really reached its zenith with medieval philosophy. Theologians argued that everything was a result of God’s will. Hence, natural laws could not exist because that would contradict the doctrine of God’s omnipotence. This was a common theme in both Muslim and Christian medieval philosophy (see Al Ghazali). Perhaps the reason was that theology was so tied to the defence of miracles that it had a very difficult time reconciling to natural laws. The only kind of determinism theology was willing to accept was one connected to fate determined by God.
With the ideological overthrow of the Church after the Reformation, however, natural science and determinism gained enormous ground. In my opinion, it culminated in the work of Karl Marx who took the methods developed by the materialist determinist philosophers and applied them to the study of human history. Analysing the contradictions of capitalism in pain-staking detail he asserted that they would inevitably be dialectically sublated by the social control of economic resources.
Marx’s argument caught the imagination of revolutionaries and the ire of conservatives throughout the 20th century. It was thus that an ideological war was waged against determinism in the social sciences through the 20th century reaching its pinnacle in the emergence of post-modernism. But determinism couldn’t be wholly thrown away. In the natural sciences the war between determinism and indeterminism continued with the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, theoretical physics, and its critics on the other hand. And in the social sciences, the battle rages between positivism and post-positivism. A branch of feminism got into the act with even greater gusto denouncing all positivism as patriarchal in its very nature.
While indeterminism could be fantastic at critiquing and wrecking social sciences, it could never itself build, explain, or discover anything of significance. Indeterminism is an enormous retreat to philosophical sophism on a civilisational level. Hence, recourse to determinism was necessary any time “positive” science needed to be undertaken (by positive I mean here that important questions had to be answered). Finally the only politics indeterminism could generate was an indeterminate identity politics.
In my view, Einstein summed it up best when he said “God doesn’t play dice with the Universe”. With due apologies to the great David Hume, cause and effect are determined. And indeterminacy was resurrected from the arsenal of medieval philosophy in order to counteract the radical and revolutionary tendencies of Marxism. It has contributed little else to human knowledge with the exception of performing an incredible and even useful role as the devil’s advocate to the advance of science.
Taimur Rahman is an academic, musician and socialist political activist from Pakistan. He teaches political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He is the band leader and spokesperson for the political music band named Laal.