"Just as no physicist will in the last resort acknowledge the play of chance in human nature, so no physiologist will admit the play of chance in the absolute sense." Where Is Science Going, p.147.

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

"We must admit that the mind of each one of our greatest geniuses — Aristotle, Kant or Leonardo, Goethe or Beethoven, Dante or Shakespeare — even at the moment of its highest flights of thought or in the most profound inner workings of the soul, was subject to the causal fiat and was a instrument in the hands of an almighty law which governs the world." Where Is Science Going, p.156.

Planck looked very closely at the problem of free will, and gave a rough version of the logical opposition between determinism and blind chance in the standard argument against free will.

"And here a question arises which seems to set a definite impassable limit to the principle of strict causality, at least in the spiritual sphere. This question is of such urgent human interest that I think it will be well if I treat it here before I come to a close. It is the question of the freedom of the human will. Our own consciousness tells us that our wills are free. And the information which that consciousness directly gives us is the last and highest exercise of our powers of understanding.

Let us ask for a moment whether the human will is free or whether it is determined in a strictly causal way. These two alternatives seem definitely to exclude one another. And as the former has obviously to be answered in the affirmative, so the assumption of a law of strict causality operating in the universe seems to be reduced to an absurdity in at least this one instance. In other words, if we assume the law of strict dynamic causality as existing throughout the universe, how can we logically exclude the human will from its operation ?

Many are the attempts that have been made to solve this dilemma. The purpose which in most cases they have set themselves has been to establish an exact limit beyond which the law of causality does not apply. Recent developments in physical science have come into play here, and the freedom of the human will has been put forward as offering logical grounds for the acceptance of only a statistical causality operative in the physical universe. As I have already stated on other occasions, I do not at all agree with this attitude. If we should accept it, then the logical result would be to reduce the human will to an organ which would be subject to the sway of mere blind chance. In my opinion the question of the human will has nothing whatsoever to do with the opposition between causal and statistical physics. Its importance is of a much more profound character and is entirely independent of any physical or biological hypothesis.

The logical disjunction goes back to the critics of Epicurus' swerve.

I am inclined to believe, with many famous philosophers, that the solution of the problem lies in quite another sphere. On close examination, the above-stated alternative — Is the human will free or is it determined by a law of strict causality? — is based on an inadmissible logical disjunction. The two cases opposed here are not exclusive of one another. What then does it mean if we say that the human will is causally determined? It can only have one meaning, which is that every single act of the will, with all its motives, can be foreseen and predicted, naturally only by somebody who knows the human being in question, with all his spiritual and physical characteristics, and who sees directly and clearly through his conscious and sub conscious life. But this would mean that such a person would be endowed with absolutely clear-seeing spiritual powers of vision; in other words he would be endowed with divine vision.

Now, in the sight of God all men are equal. Even the most highly gifted geniuses, such as a Goethe or a Mozart, are but as primitive beings the thread of whose innermost thought and most finely spun feelings is like a chain of pearls unrolling in regular succession before His eye. This does not belittle the greatness of great men. But it would be a piece of stupid sacrilege on our part if we were to arrogate to ourselves the power of being able, on the basis of our own studies, to see as clearly as the eye of God sees and to understand as clearly as the Divine Spirit understands.

The profound depths of thought cannot be penetrated by the ordinary intellect. And when we say that spiritual happenings are determined, the statement eludes the possibility of proof. It is of a metaphysical character, just as the statement that there exists an outer world of reality. But the statement that spiritual happenings are determined is logically unassailable, and it plays a very important role in our pursuit of knowledge, because it forms the basis of every attempt to understand the connections between spiritual events. No biographer will attempt to solve the question of the motives that govern the acts of his hero by attributing these to mere chance. He will rather attribute his inability to the lack of source materials or he will admit that his own powers of spiritual penetration are not capable of reaching down into the depths of these motives. And in practical everyday life our attitude to our fellow beings is based on the assumption that their words and actions are determined by distinct causes, which lie in the individual nature itself or in the environment, even though we admit that the source of these causes cannot be discovered by ourselves.

What do we then mean when we say that the human will is free? That we are always given the chance of choosing between two alternatives when it comes to a question of taking a decision. And this statement is not in contradiction with what I have already said. It would be in contradiction only if a man could perfectly see through himself as the eye of God sees through him; for then, on the basis of the law of causality, he would foresee every action of his own will and thus his will would no longer be free. But that case is logically excluded; for the most penetrative eye cannot see itself, no more than a working instrument can work upon itself. The object and subject of an act of knowing can never be identical; for we can speak of the act of knowing only when the object to be known is not influenced by the action of the subject who initiates and performs the act of knowing. Therefore the question as to whether the law of causality applies in this case or in that is in itself senseless if you apply it to the action of your own will, just as if somebody were to ask whether he could lift himself above himself or race beyond his shadow.

In principle every man can apply the law of causality to the happenings of the world around him, in the spiritual as well as in the physical order, according to the measure of his own intellectual powers; but he can do this only when he is sure that the act of applying the law of causality does not influence the happening itself. And therefore he cannot apply the law of causality to his own future thoughts or to the acts of his own will. These are the only objects which for the individual himself do not come within the force of the law of causality in such a way that he can understand its play upon them. And these objects are his dearest and most intimate treasures. On the wise management of them depend the peace and happiness of his life. The law of causality cannot lay down any line of action for him and it cannot relieve him from the rule of moral responsibility for his own doings; for the sanction of moral responsibility comes to him from another law, which has nothing to do with the law of causality. His own conscience is the tribunal of that law of moral responsibility and there he will always hear its promptings and its sanctions when he is willing to listen.

It is a dangerous act of self-delusion if one attempts to get rid of an unpleasant moral obligation by claiming that human action is the inevitable result of an inexorable law of nature. The human being who looks upon his own future as already determined by fate, or the nation that believes in a prophecy which states that its decline is inexorably decreed by a law of nature, only acknowledges a lack of will power to struggle and win through.
(Where Is Science Going, p.101-105)

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