Determinism is the theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes that preclude free will and the possibility that humans could have acted otherwise. The theory holds that the Universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring knowledge of its future is also possible. Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, in the 18th century framed the classical formulation of this thesis. For him, the present state of the Universe is the effect of its previous state and the cause of the state that follows it. If a mind, at any given moment, could know all of the forces operating in nature and the respective positions of all its components, it would thereby know with certainty the future and the past of every entity, large or small. The Persian poet Omar Khayyam expressed a similar deterministic view of the world in the concluding half of one of his quatrains: "And the first Morning of Creation wrote / What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read."

Indeterminism, on the other hand, though not denying the influence of behavioral patterns and certain extrinsic forces on human actions, insists on the reality of free choice. Exponents of determinism strive to defend their theory as compatible with moral responsibility by saying, for example, that evil results of certain actions can be foreseen, and this in itself imposes moral responsibility and creates a deterrent external cause that can influence actions.

Excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica without permission.