Chapter dzǷ: Free Will and Ethics ȁȈȂapplied on the assumption that some sheer random processes do operate
in the world, which is some evidence, if weak, that determinism in nature
is incomplete. Scientists and philosophers such as James Clerk Maxwell
and Charles Peirce have believed that airtight causality does not operate
in every little detail of the universe, that some element of randomness
remains, and that free will might occupy this gap somehow. And such gaps
might not be confined to the subatomic level that quantum theory deals
with. (Here I insert the obligatory allusion to Heisenberg’s indeterminacy
principle concerning subatomic randomness.) Maxwell and Peirce (ȀȇȆȆ,
reprintedȀȈȄȇ, p.ȈȄ; articles ofȀȇȈȀ, reprintedȀȈȄȄ, pp.Ȉ,ȂȀȈ) pointed to
the statistical or probabilistic aspect of the kinetic theory of gases, which
envisages the constituent molecules moving at different randomly deter-
mined velocities and changing velocities as they collide with one another
and with the sides of the container. Peirce also noted the random nature
of the biological mutations on which natural selection operates.
Karl Popper also argued for the genuineness of chance events even
above the subatomic level or even the molecular level. What explains the
statistical stability of the heads and tails produced by a penny-tossing
machine? Or consider Alfred Landé’s conception of dropping ivory balls
onto the center of a suitably positioned steel blade, very nearly half of
the balls falling on each side. For a determinist, barred by his doctrine
from appealing to randomness and reduced to imagining the mutual can-
cellation of many small causes, the lawlike statistical process must remain
ultimately irreducible and inexplicable (PopperȀȈȇȁ, pp.Ȉȅ–Ȁǿȃ).
Quantum-level and other small-scale indeterminacies gain relevance
from the fact that micro differences can have macro consequences. Erwin
Schrödinger gave the hypothetical example of a cat whose survival or
death in an experiment depends on an apparatus detecting particles emit-
ted randomly and infrequently in the decay of a radioactive element. Ļe
far-reaching consequences of Queen Victoria’s sex, already mentioned,
provide another example. Ļis micro-to-macro principle is further illu-
minated by the mathematics of chaos, even though the (hypothetical) sys-
tems used in expounding chaos theory are fully deterministic.
An element of sheer chance in the universe appears to operate, then,
along with the causality that is also evident. Admittedly, the pervasive
appearanceof chance or randomness does not rigorously rule out com-
plete Laplacean causality. (Laplace himself made contributions to proba-
bility theory.) My statistics professor at Columbia University aroundȀȈȃȇ,
Frederick C. Mills, avoided speaking of “chance,” period; he always used