Determinism
Etymology
From Latin "determinare," "to set limits, fix." The modern position crystallized in the 1600s and 1700s alongside Newtonian science; its sharpest image is Laplace’s demon, Pierre-Simon Laplace’s early-1800s claim that a mind knowing every particle’s state could predict the entire future with certainty.
noun · /dih-TUR-mih-niz-um/
The view that every event, including every human choice, is the inevitable result of prior causes, so nothing could have happened otherwise.
What it names
A handle for the unsettling thought that if the past fully fixes the present, our sense of open, free choice might be an illusion.
Example
If determinism is true, the neuroscientist joked, then even my decision to doubt free will was set in motion long ago.
Related idea
Fatalism says the outcome is fixed no matter what you do; determinism says your actions are part of the causal chain and genuinely make a difference — they are just themselves caused.