Book Reviewed: Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky

The science of spontaneity and freedom In this book, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that we have no free will and that such choices are determined by factors that are beyond our control. We live in a deterministic universe where all events are determined by an initial state and laws of nature. The events of the remote past are not under our control, and the human brain registers a decision long before an individual consciously decides to do so. Many unconscious factors play a role in making free will non-existent. The author makes a good argument for determinism which means everything in the universe is preordained. No matter how thinly you slice a particular situation or an event or an action, you will find that each unique biological state is caused by a unique state that preceded it. And if you want to understand things, you need to break these two states down to their component parts and figure out how each component comprising “Just-Before-Now” gave rise to each piece of “Now.” This is how the universe works. But what if that isn't the case? What if some moments aren't caused by anything preceding them? What if some unique “Now” can be caused by multiple, unique “Just-Before-Now events” The science of reductionism by breaking it down each state to its component parts is futile. Because in the world of chaos theory, emergent phenomenon, and quantum physics, indeterminacy is ever present, it defies reductionism. Hence, determinism is not compatible with free will, in essence a neuron has no apparent cause for an action of a free will. It turns out that we are at present through the scheme of biological evolution and have emerged to the current state. We had no control over our history. The author presents his arguments well in the middle chapters, and the last two chapters focus more on the sociology of how the lack of free will affect humanity. It is interesting to read another book also published in 2023 is, “Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchel makes an opposite argument stating that we have free will and it is conferred by the transition of matter (non-life) to highly self-organized and self-regulating entities (life) during biological evolution.