Scientists

We include those scientists whose work made the greatest contribution to our three major problems, freedom of the will, values, and knowledge.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

David Bohm (1917-1992)

"the description of laws of nature as completely reversible is merely consequence of an excessively simple representation of reality." (Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, 1957, p.162)

"causal laws applying inside any specified context will evidently not be adequate for the perfect prediction even of what goes on inside this context alone. (Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, 1957, p.158)

Neils Bohr (1885-1962)

"Just as the freedom of the will is an experiential category of our psychic life, causality may be considered as a mode of perception by which we reduce our sense perceptions to order." (Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Vol I, The Philosophical Writings of Neils Bohr, 1987 (1934). p.116)

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906)

S = klnW. The Entropy S equals Boltzmann's constant k times the natural logarithm of the thermodynamical probability W.

Max Born (1882-1970)

"The assumption that the coincidence of structures revealed by using different sense organs and communicable from one individual to another is accidental, is improbable to the highest degree." (Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, 1964, p.231)

Arthur Holly Compton (1892-1962)

"Nature provides nothing whose precise measurement would make possible the exact prediction of an atomic event...According to modern physics, we thus live in a world of chance." (The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton, Compton 1967)

John Eccles (1903-1997)

"All I have to say is that free will is a fact of experience. It is something each of us experiences." (The Understanding of the Brain, second edition, 1973, p.221)

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944)

"There is no halfway-house" between randomness and determinism." (The Philosophy of Physical Science, 1938, p.182)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Der Herr Gott würfelt nicht." (The Lord God does not play dice.) "I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense." (Ideas and Opinions, p.8))

"Science is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts. ...for example the series of integers." (The Evolution of Physics, p.194)

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

"We no longer have any sympathy today for the concept of 'free will'." (Reference)

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

"Our free will at the best is like that of Lucretius's atoms - which at quite uncertain times and places deviate in an uncertain manner from their course."

"the promotion of natural knowledge may tend to remove that prejudice in favour of determinism which seems to arise from assuming that the physical science of the future is a mere magnified image of that of the past." (Essay on Science and Free Will, 1873)

Newton

Planck (1858-1947)

"the assumption of chance in inorganic nature is incompatible with the working principle of natural science." (Where Is Science Going, 1936, p.154.)

Poincaré (1854-1912)

"How can we venture to speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?... We have become complete determinists. Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages." (Science and Method, 1914, p.64)

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Chapter 6.9 - Reason	Chapter 6.11 - Triads
Part Five - Problems	Part Seven - Afterword

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