HUMAN FREEDOM 419 



Heisenberg principle argues for breaks in causal determina- 

 tion; for what Planck demonstrates is freedom in the sense 

 of unpredictability, and what Compton demonstrates is 

 freedom in the sense of the absence of physical determina- 

 tion. 



The problem is not, of course, in its broadest sense, neces- 

 sarily solved on the grounds of data offered by science alone. 

 Presumably there may be data drawn from a wide range of 

 experience which would be relevant to it. But, considered 

 as a problem of speculative philosophy, it is limited for its 

 data to material offered by the subject matter or method of 

 science. Science, in its very fundamentals, is built around 

 the problem of the ascertainment of uniformities. Whether 

 the regularities are presumed to lie in nature itself, or whether 

 they are supposed to be merely techniques of explanation 

 is unimportant at this point; in either case they are the 

 sine qua non of science. For science attempts to assert 

 generalizations, and generalizations are impossible without 

 uniformities. Uniformities imply repeated connections and 

 the consequent absence of spontaneity. Thus the success 

 of science in its search for regularities is a measure of the 

 existence of regularities, or, at least, of the availability of 

 principles of regularity as techniques of explanation. But 

 man is obviously a part of nature. Whether he is merely a 

 part and therefore manifests the characteristic features of 

 the rest of nature, or an exceptional part and therefore 

 exhibits properties not common to nature as a whole — these 

 are questions which must be answered. But the legitimacy 

 of inferring the nature of human behavior from the behavior 

 of events in general seems never to have been called into 

 question. 



It is interesting to note that the attitude on the question of 

 human freedom or human determination has been through- 

 out the course of history an accurate barometer of the status 

 of science in any given period. Ages in which science has 

 been quiescent have usually been periods in which man 

 forgot the regularity and uniformity of natural processes 



