Why the cosmos has to be stochastic

It will be shown that the hypothesis of universal determinism fits poorly with the empirical realities of human life, and that no age of science (after 500BC) has embraced it. After tracing the history of universal determinism, we shall show how in the mid‐nineteenth century arose the idea of a stochastic cosmos, in which the laws of nature are probabilistic, and in which “possibilities”, in accord with natural law, are in excess of actualities.