Fatalism, Indeterminism, and Lamarckism

The question has been asked with regard to the distinction between fatalism and indeterminism: There are two different mistakes of overemphasis that one can make in philosophy—solipsism and fatalism. With solipsism, of course, one believes microcosmically that one controls one’s own destiny, while with fatalism one believes macrocosmically that the universe control’s one’s destiny. The truth is univironmental determinism: what happens to a thing is determined by the infinite matter in motion inside of it and the infinite matter in motion outside of it. Environmental determinism, derived from classical mechanics and classical determinism, ignored the microcosm (it was believed to be inert) and overemphasized the macrocosm. It was fatalistic. Systems philosophy ignored the macrocosm and overemphasized the microcosm. It was solipsistic.

Many folks today have been propagandized by the solipsism engendered by systems philosophy. You can tell by their plentiful use of the word “self.” This is what tripped up Prigogine and many others (Borchardt, 2008). To understand the world properly, however, we need to consider the thing and its environment in their interactions. Even Newton’s object traveling in a straight line is not responsible for its initial or continued motion. That motion is completely dependent on the univironment. It does not continue in a straight line if there is something in the way; the object does not knock that something out of the way unless there is matter in motion inside the object. If that something within the macrocosm is minute, we might think mistakenly that the object is then “’self-determined.” This cannot be, because even a less dense macrocosm is a contributor to the univironmental interaction we are observing. Thus, in sports, for instance, the success of the offense is equally a result of the failure of the defense.

None of this is “neo-Lamarckian,” of course, because Lamarck, like Darwin, was a classical mechanist, overemphasizing the macrocosm, often to a ridiculous extent. Univironmental determinists, had they been present at the time those theories were devised, would have insisted that an equal amount of attention be paid to the microcosms involved. With such grounding, genetics would have appeared sooner and they would have gotten around to explaining biopoesis also a lot sooner than it was done. Eventually, they might have even realized that Neo-Darwinism is only an inadequate, special case of the universal mechanism of evolution: univironmental determinism.

Reference:

Borchardt, G., 2008, Resolution of the SLT-order paradox: Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance (http://scientificphilosophy.com/Downloads/SLTOrder.pdf), v. 5, no. 1.