RSSAll Entries Tagged With: "fate"

Albert Einstein was one of the brainiest people who ever lived. Yet, smart as he was, when it came to quantum physics, Einstein forgot the first rule of science: a scientist's personal convictions are secondary to the truths that facts reveal.

God’s Loaded Dice: Einstein and the Death of Classical Reality

There is a crucial distinction between explanatory systems that are based upon fate vs. prediction. Both perspectives purport to shed light upon the course of future events, however, fate is based upon a faith in metaphysics whereas prediction is scientific. Determinism represents a branch of metaphysics primarily because determinists claim to know more about the [...]

Determinists explain everything that occurs in the universe as an outcome of an infallible master narrative: if an apple falls from a tree, or a star explodes in the Andromeda Galaxy, then determinists will insist that those events transpired precisely how and when they did because an insuperable chain of causality preordained each outcome. The magic of this type of deductive thinking--which, once again, is predicated on a dogmatic allegiance to an "infallible" master narrative--is that it can be used to explain anything and everything. However, as Karl Popper articulated so convincingly, deductive theories that purport to explain everything in fact succeed in explaining nothing scientifically.

Elementary My Dear Watson! The Beauty (and Baloney) of Being Right about Everything

Fate is the most potent weapon in a the arsenal of determinists like Stephen Hawking. To contend, as determinists plainly do, that the outcomes of events are pre-determined is essentially the same as saying that the ebbs and flows of history are all dictated by fate. Actors, whether animate or inanimate, have no control over [...]