decisions; which is what most of us call - freedom of choice.
There is a new science based on the idea that some natural phenomena have a sensitive dependence on initial conditions; it is sometimes called the science of Chaos or aperiodicity. For example, there is reason to think that small changes in initial meteorological conditions can produce dramatically different weather patterns within a matter of days; and if this is right, it means that predicting the weather beyond the end of the week is both practically and theoretically impossible. One can reach the same conclusion by noting that weather never repeats itself exactly; it is not periodic, it is aperiodic. Therefore it cannot be predicted far into the future with any precision. There are many other natural phenomena that appear to obey the same laws of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This is the scientist's answer to Laplace's infinitely patient mathematician; his determinism is rubbish except when the imponderables are pared down so as to give the simplest examples. The path of planets round the sun, or the controlled swing of a pendulum can be predicted; but the movement of water in a mountain stream is right outside the theory of fluid dynamics, and hopelessly beyond the ability of mathematicians and computers to analyse and therefore to predict. Indeed it is not predictable. Of course the stream flows downhill; but within the parameters of the stream bed the path of an individual drop of water is not predictable. This Chapter is my contribution, with the idea that the mind's ability to switch its sense of perspective enables it to have a sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and thereby escape the oppressive tyranny of determinism. However I owe nothing to the scientists; the bulk of this Chapter was written in January 1966, long before the scientist's work became popular knowledge.