n3-al-mukhatabat-journal

whereas the phenomenon of wave/particle duality is not explained till the
present time 107 .
On the other hand, with respect to the two essential relations, determinism and
reduction things are not less ambiguous.
According to John T. Roberts, the most famous exposition of the doctrine of
determinism in the context of modern science is due to Pierre Laplace:
We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its
antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence
knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the
momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend
in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest
atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject
all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the
past would be present to its eyes. 108
However, such a concept has become more complex, especially when related to
laws of nature. According to Roberts, it is taken to be of a deterministic theory,
where the property of determinism is defined by quantifying over all the
physically possible worlds allowed by the theory. Alternatively, he adds, one can
define determinism as a property of a set of laws, proceeding as above, but
quantifying over all the possible worlds allowed by that set of laws. (Roberts:
200)
Similarly, the concept of reduction is no less complicated. Reductionism is the
thesis that the results of inquiry in one domain -be they concepts, heuristics,
laws, or theories- can be understood or are explained by the conceptual
resources of another, more fundamental domain 109 . According to Michael
Silberstein, historically, there are two main construals of the problem of
reduction and emergence, ontological and epistemological:
107 See more details in the following section.
108 Roberts ,John T. 2006, "Determinism", in Sahotra Sarkar and Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), the Philosophy of
Science – An Encychlopedia, Routledge, p. 198.
109 Wimsatt, William C. and Sarkar, Sahotra. 2006, "Reductionism", in Sahotra Sarkar and Jessica Pfeifer
(eds.), the Philosophy of Science – An Encychlopedia, Routledge, p. 696.
AL-MUKHATABAT Numéro 03 Année 01/2012 لىولأا ةن سلا 30 ددعلا تابطانا
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ISSN: 1737-6432