The first point which is regularly made about the concept of determinism is that it is a positive assertion about the interconnectivity of the causal sequences that exist in the world. Arthur Eddington put this point starkly when he described himself as an indeterminist for the same reason that he was an ‘anti-moon-is-made-of-green-cheese-ist’ (Eddington 1932, 238). The point he sought to make was that, just as the green-cheese interpretation of lunar construction is a conjecture, so too is the claim that all the natural processes of the world are deterministic. Both, he argued, are fundamentally irrefutable claims about the nature of reality of a type that can be invented ad nauseam. Of course since Eddington wrote this passage man has been able to land on the moon and verify that it is not constructed of cheese, and it is arguable that his green-cheese conjecture is experimentally verifiable. The point still remains, however, that making the claim that the world is determinate and fully interconnected is essentially a metaphysical assertion about the interconnectivity of ontology. Indeed because it remains an assertion which is exceedingly difficult to ‘prove’ on a universal scale, as this would require perfect knowledge of every physical mechanism in the world, many philosophers have been keen to assert that it is belief in widespread indeterminism which is the more natural and justifiable approach.

This concept of indeterminism is one which is fundamental to many of the modern debates about the relationship between science and theology.