Indeterminism

Indeterminism is the concept that events (certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or not caused deterministically (cf. causality) by prior events. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical problem of free will, particularly in the form of metaphysical libertarianism.

In science, Indeterminism has been promoted by the French biologist Jacques Monod (Nobel Prize 1965) essay "Chance and necessity". It is also asserted by Werner Heisenberg (Nobel Prize 1932), Sir Arthur Eddington, Max Born (Nobel Prize 1954) and Murray Gell-Mann (Nobel Prize 1969). The physicist-chemist Ilya Prigogine (Nobel Prize 1977) argued for indeterminism in complex systems.