Abstract
Fatalism is widespread in our culture. It is present in some religious creeds, as in Calvinism with its idea of predestination or in Islam with its idea of kismet. I am not interested here in fatalism in that domain. What is of interest for me is that the metaphysical hypothesis of fatalism is not seldom represented among our philosophizing scientists and philosophers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See e.g. his Metaphysics, Prentice Hall, 1974, the chapter on fatalism and his paper ‘Fatalism’ in: R. M. Gale (ed.), The Philosophy of Time (a collection of essays). Humanities Press, 1978.
For typical examples of transientistic arguments concerning Relativity, see e.g. the papers of Ph. Frank and M. Čapek in: M. Čapek (ed.), The Concepts of Space and Time, Boston Studies, vol. xii, Reidel 1976.
For criticism, see e.g. Hilary Putnam, ‘Time and Physical Geometry’, in his Philosophical Papers, vol. I, Cambridge University Press, 1975, or: C. W. Rietdijk, ‘Special Relativity and Determinism’, Phil, of Science, December 1976. (Rietdijk confuses fatalism - whose name he never uses but actually defends in his paper - with determinism which he supposedly but not actually defends. With these verbal misunderstandings overcome, the paper is very good.)
See the paper ‘Einstein Time and Process Time’, as well as the discussion of that paper in: D. R. Griffin (ed.), Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, SUNY Press, 1986.
See O. Costa de Beauregard, Time, the Physical Magnitude, Reidel, 1987.
See the contribution of John Bell to: P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown (eds.), The Ghost in the Atom, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 47.
Compare J. A. Wheeler, ‘Bohr, Einstein and the Strange Lesson of the Quantum’, in: R. Q. Elvee, Mind in Nature, Harper and Row, 1982. The quoted sentence is on p. 23.
Quoted in: P. Davies, God and the New Physics, Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 44.
See for example: C. D. Broad, ‘Determinism, Indeterminism and Libertarianism’, in: B. Berofsky (ed.), Free Will and Determinism, Harper and Row, 1966
and J. M. E. McTaggart, ‘A Defense of Determinism’, in: Ph. Davis (ed.), Introduction to Moral Philosophy, Ch. E. Merril Publishing Co., 1973. (These authors examine libertarianism in the context of the controversy between determinism and indeterminism and not, as it should be done, in the context of controversy between fatalism and Aristotelian possi- bilism. This notwithstanding, they point very clearly to what makes libertarianism absurd.)
See his ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, J. Phil, vol. LXVIII, No. 1, 1971.
In: P. E. Davis, Introduction to Moral Philosophy. The quotations in my text below are from pp. 337 and 341.
P. F. Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’, in his “Freedom and Resentment” and Other Essays, Methuen, 1974.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eilstein, H. (1995). The Virus of Fatalism. In: Gavroglu, K., Stachel, J., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Science, Mind and Art. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 165. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0469-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0469-2_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-2990-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-0469-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive