Deterministic System (philosophy) - Some Deterministic Systems

Some Deterministic Systems

• Classical physics is the deterministic system assumed in the domino example which scientists can use to describe all events which take place on a scale larger than individual atoms. Classical physics includes Newton's laws of motion, Classical electrodynamics, thermodynamics, the Special theory of relativity, the General theory of relativity, chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. Some of these systems are complex, and events may be difficult to predict in practice, but if the starting conditions were known in enough detail, the outcomes of events in such systems could be predicted.

• Nearly all electronic computers in use today are based on theoretical von Neumann computers or Turing machines, i.e.: they are devices that perform one small, deterministic step at a time. If all inputs are specified, the computer will always produce a particular output which is calculated deterministically. Computer scientists also study other models of computation including parallel computers (more than one deterministic step at a time), and quantum computers (which are based on non-deterministic quantum mechanical models). Computer systems or programs are often described as non-deterministic if their behavior depends on factors that cannot be predicted or reliably reproduced, such as the time of day or the speed at which the user enters data at the keyboard. This, however, is a somewhat different usage of the term.

• Behaviorism, an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states, is usually considered to be deterministic and opposed to free will.