The statement that "the future is predetermined" seems to us to belong — Determinism

"It is difficult to overestimate the importance of determinism in the behavioral sciences. Discovering the determinants of socialization, learning, group dynamics, abnormality, and effective management is the goal in most behavioral science disciplines. What if, for example, the determinants of depression were discovered? Although some behavioral scientists might claim that they already know what determines depression, current knowledge is more an educated guess than an exact understanding. What if we knew precisely the determinants of depression? Knowledge of this sort would surely provide a clear-cut comprehension of the phenomenon as well as suggest a surefire treatment of its harmful effects. In other words, we would know the cause of depression."

"We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of this intelligence. Its discoveries in mechanics and geometry, added to that of universal gravity, have enabled it to comprehend in the same analytical expressions the past and future states of the system of the world. Applying the same method to some other objects of its knowledge, it has succeeded in referring to general laws observed phenomena and in foreseeing those which given circumstances ought to produce. All these efforts in the search for truth tend to lead it back continually to the vast intelligence which we have just mentioned, but from which it will always remain infinitely removed."

"This is a funny question: we all know what it means to do something. But the problem is, if the act wasnt determined in advance, by your desires, beliefs, and personality, among other things, it seems to be something that just happened, without any explanation. And in that case, how was it your doing?"

"If determinism is true for everything that happens, it was already determined before you were born that you would choose cake. Your choice was determined by the situation immediately before, and that situation was determined by the situation before it, and so on as far back as you want to go. Even if determinism isnt true for everything that happens -- even if some things just happen without being determined by causes that were there in advance -- it would still be very significant if everything we did were determined before we did it. However free you might feel when choosing between fruit and cake, or between two candidates in an election, you would really be able to make only one choice in those circumstances-though if the circumstances or your desires had been different, you would have chosen differently."

"It must be admitted that the new theoretical conception owes its origin not to any flight of fancy but to the compelling force of the facts of experience. All attempts to represent the particle and wave features displayed in the phenomena of light and matter, by direct course to a space-time model, have so far ended in failure. And Heisenberg has convincing shown, from an empirical point of view, any decision as to a rigorously deterministic structure of nature is definitely ruled out, because of the atomistic structure of our experimental apparatus. Thus it is probably out of the question that any future knowledge can compel physics again to relinquish our present statistical theoretical foundation in favor of a deterministic one which would deal directly with physical reality."

"Newtonian laws of motion allow a prediction of the future based on knowledge of the present because these laws are of the formd\xi_k/dt = F_k(\xi_1, \xi_2,\cdots \xi_n) \qquad \qquad (k = 1, 2, \cdots n)...if the values of the "state variables" are known for the present instant of time t = 0, one can "predict" their values for any past or future time t. All laws of this kind are called "causal laws." The general "principle of causality" would claim that all phenomena are governed by causal laws which would have the [above] form... where \xi_1,\cdots \xi_n are any variables that determine the "state" of a physical system at the time t. ...belief in this general principle is supported by the special case of astronomy where \xi_k are the coordinates and velocities of mass-points and the functions F_k are known to be simple mathematical formulae derived from Newtons laws of gravitation. ...What caused the success was the simplicity of the laws in comparison of the complexity of the observed facts. If we regard the F_k as arbitrary functions... and admit complicated initial conditions, the causal law... may be "valid" but will not guarantee the same kind of success. It may be that the law is as complex as the observed facts. Then there is no advantage..."