Season 1 Podcast 24, “Science and Freewill.”
In his book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking wrote, “Since people live in the universe and interact with the other objects in it, scientific determinism must hold for people as well.”
Scientific determinism refers to the forces of nature that dictate our behavior. Many scientists believe in biological or genetic determinism, environmental determinism, cultural or social determinism, behavioral determinism, causal determinism, etc. The fundamental assumption is that freewill does not exist.
The question whether or not man has freewill is an ancient question and remains one of the most important questions in the universe. The stakes are very high. If freewill exists, then we are responsible for our behavior. If freewill does not exist, then we are not responsible for our behavior. We are automatons. As ants to man, so are we to the stars, robotic insects scurrying over the earth waiting to be stamped out by cataclysmic events.
If freewill does not exist, then one may logically ask, what is the purpose of life? The answer is self-evident. Without freewill, there is no purpose to life except as an amusement for the gods, and Shakespeare’s Gloucester was right,
“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.”
Individuals may differ in opinions, but the scientific community holds to the opinion of a deterministic universe. Scientific determinism means there is no freewill, no freedom, and no agency. Some force outside ourselves governs our behavior. We are all robots, automatons, biological machines doing the bidding of nature. We are accidentally good or accidentally evil and do not bear responsibility for our actions. To the scientific community, everything is predestined by law, even human behavior. Mr. Hawking is a physicist and looks at determinism from an entirely physical point of view based on temporal law. The physical body is all there is. We have no soul. It follows that the body is merely a biological machine governed by law much as the planets and stars are governed by law.
Strictly speaking that is scientific determinism, based on physical law. Physicists propose an accidental universe. At the core of an accidental universe is the philosophy that everything is ruled by chance and there is no real order in the universe, consequently no real purpose in our lives. Although not compatible with the idea of an accidental universe, scientists adhere to the idea that once set in motion, everything is on a fixed, undeviating course determined by the past. In other words, if you had full information of the past, you could predict your own future for it would be inevitable. Ignorance of law alone gives the illusion of freewill. In other words it only appears that we have freewill because we are not smart enough to see that we don’t. Even the best of computers aren’t fast enough to calculate all the necessary probabilities. We are simply a product of occurrences that began with the big bang and will end in a giant heat death, rendering everything meaningless. Science is optimistic in expectations and hopes of new discoveries, but entirely nihilistic in the final outcome. Scientific nihilism spills over into personal philosophy about life. As an old beer commercial said, “You only go around once. Live life with gusto.” In other words, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die.”
Whereas physicists argue against freewill from a physical standpoint, blaming causal determinism, biologists argue against freewill because of evolutionary and genetic determinism. Social scientists argue against freewill because of environmental determinism. Every science develops its own argument against freewill.
For physicists, the universe was created by accident. They simply ignore the law
