REREADING DARWIN. NOTES FOR A CRITICAL HISTORY OF INDETERMINISM

On carefully re-examining the theory of natural selection, one can see in it the first nondeterministic hypothesis in the history of modern science. As such it also exemplifies the use of statistics as a modus intellegendi, as an empirical language for all phenomena which cannot be interpreted in terms of strict teleology. According to this interpretation, the work of Darwin turns the course of science towards a new way of knowing, of interpreting nature, the way that with Mendel's Laws has given birth to a deep renewal of research in biology, and has also gradually come to characterize all modern physics starting from the statistical thermodynamics of Boltzmann.