If my beliefs are ‘nothing but’ the mechanical products of a blind system, so are all views, including those of the reductionist. If everything is already determined, the determinist’s tendency to embrace determinism is also merely determined, and we have no reason to take it seriously (since we are all determined either to believe it or not already). As the philosopher Hans Jonas observed, there is an unspoken hierarchical principle involved: the scientist does take man to be determined by causal laws – but not himself while he assumes and exercises his freedom of enquiry and his openness to
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