Argument against scientific determinism

publish Opened 2024-01-12. Part of Musings on philosophy.

To do: Basically summarize Steven Hawking’s chapter on this in Brief Answers.

I think the way it goes is something like:

• The Laplace demon works by assuming there are in fact real forces acting between particles at all times
• But Max Planck concluded that beyond some very small unit size, that’s not true
• And Einstein’s dig into elementary particles found that what we call a “proton” (previously something we felt had acting potential on other units of mass of the same size) is actually just two up quarks and a down quark
  • Same deal with neutrons which are two down quarks and an up quark
• So the conclusion of all this is basically that if we can’t conclude particles really exist, and we already have reason to disbelieve that even particles act on each other up to a certain size — scientific determinism comes unraveling really quick. There’s nothing that actually proves what comes next is a result of what came before.

To do: Finish this up. Thought cabinet