Abstract

The success of the natural sciences has led to the widespread view that the course of reality is necessarily determined by natural laws. This view is known to be in tension with the idea that people can act freely and are therefore responsible for their actions. This article aims to examine the relationship between the natural sciences and concepts of free will in more detail. An analysis of scientific practice will be used to show that a successful scientific description of reality does not imply determinism and, as a rational enterprise, presupposes a libertarian concept of free will.