ABSTRACT

Indeterminism is the doctrine that different future courses of events are equally compatible with the present state of the universe (Bynum, Brown, & Porter, 1981). Indeterminism means that there can be no one-to-one correspondence between antecedent and consequent and thus, it would seem to render prediction and causal explanation of development impossible. The main purpose of the four chapters reviewed here is to demonstrate that partially indeterminate developmental systems can nevertheless be understood and that determinism and indeterminism act in concert to create development.