QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

predictions of the theory perhaps demand some re-evaluation concerning the nature of natural
laws. The principle of determinism was shaped in the modern age, with the aid of a universal law
of causality. Kant presented this law as follows: every event has a cause of which it is the
inevitable consequence. His proposal was that this was a synthetic a priori truth. Leibnitz had
proposed a weaker principle, according to which every event had a cause which made the
occurrence of that event more probable than its non-occurrence. The nature of the causal
relationship could not be established on an empirical basis, but the magnificent success of
Newtonian mechanics convinced many thinkers, in addition to Kant, to plump for
determinism. 396
Confusion in the discussions concerning mechanism as well as determinism was also caused
because both could be talked about at different levels – as systems, as laws, as theories and as
worldly connections. In speaking about the inevitability of events, a property of theory, i.e. its
determinism, is perhaps rashly universalised as pertaining to the whole world. It is at least
potentially misleading in suggesting that it is a system of bodies, rather than a theory about
certain properties of a system of bodies, which is said to be deterministic. 397 Regardless of the
importance of laws, theories or theoretical research programmes, the accepted view of their
nature, not to mention their relationship to the world, is neither unambiguous nor
uncontroversial.
When even the question of the nature of the scientific laws and paradigms is uncertain, it is no
wonder that the discussions between the defenders and critics of the scientific way of thinking
have generally proved to be unfruitful. Neither modern and postmodern ways of thinking, nor the
scientific and the humanist standpoints have been able provide clear insights concerning the
strategies for future development. In spite of the frequent criticism aimed at the one-sidedness of
natural science, developments in physics already outstripped the limitations of the mechanisticdeterministic
paradigm at the beginning of the 1900s. It is possible to claim that modern physics
has been in the front row of science in fundamentally questioning the ways of thinking and
methodologies adopted at the beginning of the modern age. It offers comprehensive and
empirically-based theories which can also be used to re-evaluate both basic concepts and
methods of approaching reality. This re-evaluation is essentially a task for natural philosophy,
and one in which metaphysics cannot be ignored.
396 Niiniluoto 1983, 246-247, 251.
149