Pre-determinism implies that all the information in the universe today was implicit in the earliest moments of the universe. It is information conserving. It is consistent with the theological idea of God's foreknowledge (which is logically inconsistent with His omnipotence).

Since modern physics shows that the universe in indeterministic, with profound effects on the atomic scale of microscopic processes, we will find it valuable to distinguish pre-determinism (inevitable causal chains) from the adequate determinism that we have in the real world and obvious in the classical physical laws that apply in the macrocosmos.

Determinism is a modern name (nineteenth-century) for Democritus' ancient idea that strict causal laws control the motion of atoms, and that everything - including human minds - consists merely of atoms in a void.

As Democritus' mentor and fellow materialist Leucippus put it, an absolute necessity leaves no room in the cosmos for chance. Pre-determinism is a better name for this idea of necessity and total absence of chance.

"Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity." ¹

οὐδὲν χρῆμα μάτην γίνεται, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἐκ λόγου τε καὶ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης

Determinism, especially the variation of "soft" determinism (cf. William James) or compatibilism, is supported as a theory of free will by a majority of philosophers, each with special vested interests in one or more of the many determinisms.

Compatibilism is a form of determinism that argues man is free as long as his own will is one of the steps in the causal chain, even if his choices are completely pre-determined for physical reasons or preordained by God.

The core idea of determinism is closely related to the idea of causality. But we can have causality without determinism, especially the "soft" causality that follows an "uncaused" event (a causa sui) that is not predictable from prior events.

Aristotle called such events archai (ἀρχαί) - starting points or "fresh starts" in new causal chains which break the bonds of determinism.

Despite David Hume's critical attack on the necessity of causes, many philosophers embrace causality and determinism strongly. Some even connect it to the very possibility of logic and reason. And Hume himself believed strongly, if inconsistently, in necessity. " 'tis impossible to admit any medium betwixt chance and necessity," he said.

Despite this, Hume was disturbed by the implications of pre-determinism in his theory. Most compatibilists and determinists since Hobbes and Hume never mention the fact that a causal chain of events going back before our birth would not provide the kind of liberty they are looking for. But Hume frankly admits that such a causal chain would be a serious objection to his theory.

I pretend not to have obviated or removed all objections to this theory, with regard to necessity and liberty. I can foresee other objections, derived from topics which have not here been treated of. It may be said, for instance, that, if voluntary actions be subjected to the same laws of necessity with the operations of matter, there is a continued chain of necessary causes, pre-ordained and pre-determined, reaching from the original cause of all to every single volition, of every human creature. No contingency anywhere in the universe; no indifference; no liberty. While we act, we are, at the same time, acted upon.

(Enquiry, Book VIII, Of Liberty and Necessity, p. 99)

Indeterminism for some is simply an occasional event without a cause. We can have an adequate causality without strict determinism. Strict determinism means complete predictability of events and only one possible future. Adequate determinism provides statistical predictability, which in normal situations for physical objects approaches statistical certainty.

Phillipa Foot argued that because our actions are determined by our motives, our character and values, our feelings and desires, in no way leads to the conclusion that they are predetermined from the beginning of the universe.

The presence of quantum uncertainty leads some philosophers to call the world indetermined. But indeterminism is somewhat misleading, with strong negative connotations, when most events are overwhelmingly "adequately determined." Nevertheless, speaking logically, if a single event is undetermined, then indeterminism is true, and determinism false. ¹

The sense of "coming to a firm decision" (to do something) is from 1450.

Determination as a "quality of being resolute" dates from 1822.

Before the nineteenth century determinists were called Necessarians. William Belsham contrasted them (favorably) with the incoherent Libertarians in 1789, the first use of Libertarian.

Determinism appears in 1846 in Sir William Hamilton's edition of Thomas Reid's works as a note on p.87.

There are two schemes of Necessity - the Necessitation by efficient - the Necessitation by final causes. The former is brute or blind Fate; the latter rational Determinism.

In 1855, William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) wrote,

The theory of Determinism, in which the will is determined or swayed to a particular course by external inducements and forced habits, so that the consciousness of freedom rests chiefly upon an oblivion of the antecedents of our choice.

Ernst Cassirer claimed (mistakenly?) that Determinism in the philosophical sense of a "doctrine that everything that happens is determined by a necessary chain of causation." dates from 1876.

Note that ancient philosophers worried about this causal chain (ἄλυσις), but those philosophers who allowed the existence of chance, (Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Alexander of Aphrodisias), denied such a causal chain, while maintaining that human decisions were caused by neither chance nor necessity but by a tertium quid - our autonomous human agency.

The adjective determinist appeared first in the Contemporary Review of October 1874 - "The objections of our modern Determinists." In the Contemporary Review of March 1885 R. H. Hutton described "The necessarian or determinist theory of human action."