Biological Determinism and Human Freedom

Abstract

The numerous attempts, old and new, to carry biological formulations and analogies over into the realm of human personal and social problems have not always clarified the latter. The slogan Biologie ist heute Alles requires some qualification or else a stretching of the limits of the biological field beyond what most biologists would claim. There is, however, a growing demand for an attack upon problems of human behavior by the methods of natural science-observation, experiment, and the formulation of empirically determined rules of uniform, orderly, and verifiable natural process. Within their limitations these methods, faithfully followed, are sure to yield results of value. Human nature can be studied by the methods of natural science in so far as the data employed are natural events inhering in a unitary system of orderly cause-and-effect sequences. The disruption of such a unitary system by the admission of uncaused action, of mystical factors, or of metaphysical absolutes or sanctions violates the scientific method as commonly defined by experts in this field. It is of interest, accordingly, to ask how far it is profitable to push the inquiry into problems of human behavior with the ordinary methods of natural science. The natural order is regarded by most scientific investigators as deterministic. Human conduct is commonly regarded as in some respects free. The natural history of man is therefore confronted at the outset with a hoary problem which must be clarified before we can fix the limits of the inquiry. Is it possible so to define determinism and freedom as to conform with current scientific and popular usage and at the same time clarify the most acute