Is everything in life predetermined?

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Nothing can be accepted as true or false without empirical evidence. Whether everything in life is predestined is a complex question from the point of view of science. Science offers two main views on this: determinism and free will.

Determinism

According to fatalism, all events and activities have a predetermined cause. In physics, especially Newtonian mechanics, this idea was widely prevalent where the world was seen as a vast mechanical system. It was assumed that the future could be determined by knowing the state and motion of each particle. According to Sir Isaac Newton's theory, the universe runs like a huge machine where the movement of every particle is predetermined according to certain laws. According to Pierre-Simon Laplace, if a "giant" knew the exact position and momentum of every particle in the universe, he could accurately calculate the future.

Free Will

Conversely, according to the doctrine of free will, people can make decisions freely and their actions are not predetermined. According to the theory of quantum mechanics in physics, some events actually occur based on probability. At the quantum level, probability rather than specificity operates. That is, some events cannot be predicted and are indeed accidental. According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, it is impossible to determine the exact position and speed of a particle simultaneously. As a result, future predictions are also not completely accurate. On the other hand our genes and environment influence many aspects of our lives, but at the same time we have decision-making power.

So most scientists and philosophers think that reality lies somewhere between fatalism and free will. We have control over some things in our lives, but some things are beyond our control. Both predestination and free will have a scientific basis. Neither is wholly true in isolation, but rather an integrated reality of both governs our lives.

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