1. The Garden of Forking Paths
“There is a disputation that will continue till mankind is raised from the dead, between the necessitarians and the partisans of free will.”
These are the words of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, 13th century Persian poet and Sufi Muslim philosopher. The problem of free will of which Rumi speaks has arisen in human history whenever humans have reached a higher stage of self-consciousness about how profoundly the world may influence their behavior in ways unknown to them and beyond their control. The advent of doctrines of determinism or necessity in the history of ideas is an indication that this higher stage of awareness has been reached.