Editing Determinism (section)

==== {{Anchor|Nomological determinism}}Nomological ====
Nomological determinism is the most common form of causal determinism and is generally synonymous with physical determinism.{{cn|date=May 2025}} This is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws and that every occurrence inevitably results from prior events. Nomological determinism is sometimes illustrated by the [[thought experiment]] of [[Laplace's demon]].  [[Laplace]] posited that an omniscient observer, knowing with infinite precision all the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe, could predict the future entirely.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Robert C. Solomon |title=The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy |author2=Kathleen M. Higgins |publisher=Cengage Learning |year=2009 |isbn=978-0495595151 |edition=8th |page=232 |chapter=Free will and determinism |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ekh2AKqXdqgC&pg=PA232}}</ref> [[Ernest Nagel]] viewed determinism in terms of a [[configuration space (physics)|physical state]], declaring a theory to be deterministic if it predicts a state at other times uniquely from values at one given time.<ref>{{cite book |author=Ernest Nagel |title=The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation |publisher=Hackett |year=1999 |isbn=978-0915144716 |edition=2nd |pages=285–292 |chapter=§V: Alternative descriptions of physical state |quote=A theory is deterministic if, and only if, given its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u6EycHgRfkQC&pg=PA285}}</ref>