Metaphysical Postulates and Methods of Research

Rene Thom and Le Dibat revive an old metaphysical quarrel. Does chance exist in nature or is it the result of our ignorance of causes, which science has yet to describe? Is chance essential or the product of ignorance? And now the question: Why this question? What is at stake? Why has Rene Thom revived this quarrel? Surely some irritation, some question of mood, which leads one to find a given method of research disagreeable, is not far removed from this type of dispute and perhaps for good reason. Moreover, the cultural context of ideas framed by the twin banks of the Seine is not conducive to the detachment and serenity which would be desirable. My isolation on the mounts of Jerusalem keeps me relatively removed from such eruptions. But this may be why I am attributed quite easily, I might add some underlying mystical philosophy. Invoking chance usually touches off accusations of agnosticism. They are probably not incompatible. And why not? One's mystic is always another's heretic. So much for that. Back to the question and to its significance. Thom, as a scientist, denies chance the right to exist. More precisely, he enjoins all scientists to adopt the metaphysical mystical? attitude that consists of postulating that chance does not exist, for to espouse the opposite is a priori to renounce the possibility of knowledge. Given that the scientific enterprise consists of discovering laws that govern natural phenomena, it can only rest on the postulate that such laws exist. For Thom only deterministic laws merit the status of scientific laws; statistical laws are but a heuristics of determinism, tentative, makeshift arrangements, pending replacement by deterministic laws

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• Between Determinism and Indeterminism

  J Fisher Solomon•SubStance•1988

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