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Absence of Contingency in the Newtonian Universe
Authors:James W. McAllister
Affiliation:(1) Faculty of Philosophy, University of Leiden, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
Abstract:I argue that, contrary to thestandard view, the Newtonian universe containsno contingency. I do this by arguing (i) thatno contingency is introduced into the Newtonianuniverse by the initial conditions of physicalsystems in the universe, and (ii) that theclaim that the Newtonian universe as a wholehas contingent properties leads to incoherence.This result suggests that Newtonian physics iseither inconsistent or incomplete, since thelaws of Newtonian physics are too weak todetermine all the properties of the Newtonianuniverse uniquely.
Keywords:contingency  determinism  initial conditions  laws of nature  Newtonian physics
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