"Determinism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ardent advocate of the Impressionistic painters. I have a pamphlet by Mederic Dufour, entitled Etude sur l'AEthetique de Jules Laforgue: une Philosophie de l'Impressionisme, which is interesting, though far from conclusive, being an attack on the determinism of Taine, and a defence of Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley. But then we only formulate our preferences into laws. The best thing in it is the phrase: "There are no types, there is only humanity," to the wisdom of which we ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of evolution, as formulated by Lyell and Darwin, is to explain phenomena by known causes. Now, directive power is not a known cause. Determinism compels me to believe that every event is inevitable. If we admit a directive power, the order of nature becomes capricious and unintelligible. Excuse my saying all this. But that is the dilemma as it presents itself to my mind. If it does not trouble other people, I can only say, so much ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... in the interpretation of the word fatum and the role played by the gods[4] that the test of Vergil's philosophy is usually applied. The modern equivalent of fatum is, as Guyau[5] has said, determinism. Determinism was accepted by both schools but with a difference. To the Stoic, fatum is a synonym of Providence whose popular name is Zeus. The Epicurean also accepts fatum as governing the universe, but it is not teleological, and Zeus is not identified with it but is, like man, subordinated ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... may be actually existing, we can recognize that they may have a controlling influence on all present action, and the two together may constitute the 'higher plane' or totality of things after which, as it seems to me, we are impelled to seek, in connection with the directing of form or determinism, and the action of living beings consciously directed to a ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... fact we seem to be pressing upon the student of sociology the essential argument of geographical and evolutionary determinism, in fact inviting him to adopt a view, indeed to commit himself to a method, which may be not only foreign to his habits, but repugnant to his whole view of life and history. And if able advocacy of this determinist view of society for at least the past five ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton |
