ABSTRACT
The general idea of determinism is that the future of the world is fixed in one unavoidable pattern. This chapter describes some forms of the determinism. They are physical, psychological, theological, logical and special. The Marxist version of economic determinism is encountering some heavy weather in contemporary times. Sociobiology does for biology what Marxism does for economics: it captures the explanatory force and predictive power of determinism in general and focuses it on the subject matter of one science. Just as there are various grounds for accepting economic, sociobiological, and cultural determinisms, there are correspondingly varied reasons for rejecting them. The position that opposes determinism in the context of moral philosophy was once called "Free Will", but as the Will loses prominence and ceases to be viewed as a philosophical reality, the modern position of moral indeterminism is coming to be called libertarianism.
