Biological Determinism Research Paper

Many people live their lives effortlessly making decisions everyday, major and minor, and not thinking about the effect their decisions have, or even why they make some of their decisions. Do our decisions really matter or make a difference? In the deterministic way of thought, no, the decisions one makes on a day to day basis are actually not decided in the present. Events that have happened in the past determine the outcome of every situation in the present. This way of thinking presents itself in deterministic literature, but also in everyday life for some people. To acquire insight into this way of thinking, one must look at the origins and types of determinism, its appearance in literature, relevance today and the controversy and
Some of its earliest appearances in literature were during the 1800’s in America (“Determinism.”). Some of the first accounts of determinism in American literature are within the Enlightenment period of 1700-1800. During the Enlightenment, much value was placed on scientific reasoning and methodology. This gave way to the conception of biological determinism, that because of biological factors, a person does certain things and behaves a certain way (Burke). Even though now much of biological determinism has been disproven, there have been other arguments, such as nature vs. nurture, used in American literature. For example, racial determinism was used by many prejudiced people to instill segregation and discrimination into American society. Many of these self-entitled people used research from scientists such as Charles Darwin to suggest that one race was supreme over another (Burke). For instance, during the period of time where many Americans discriminated against African Americans, some writers used the concept of “survival of the fittest” to condone the actions of segregation. This theory of racial discrimination today, however, is known to be false. Determinism also appears in American literature within the Naturalist literary movement, 1865-1910. One of the main aspects of Naturalism is that characters have no control over what happens in their lives. Many times, they are shown at the
Many physicists claim that the physical world is indeterministic, in cases such as quantum mechanics (“Determinism.”). On the other hand, it makes hard to validate science without the presence of determinism to predict the future, scientific studies, or conclusions. But does knowing if the universe in general is deterministic affect our daily lives (Pribble)? The notion of determinism also comes with open-ended questions that deal with the “big picture” of life. Many of these questions deal with the point of life in general, “Why are we here?” One psychologist, Erich Fromm, states that, “all of us have the potential to control our own lives but that many of us are too afraid to do so,” (McLeod). This in turn says that humans let their circumstances control their lives because governing their own lives scares them. In any case, there is no way to know whether or not determinism is true or false, so there will always be controversy surrounding the philosophy of