[From English determine: to ordain or fix beforehand; derived from Latin determinare: to limit or bound.]
(metaphysics) The belief that all physical events and human actions are fixed or ordained by external forces before they happen. Determinists deny the existence of freely chosen human activity ("free will"), and the more consistent determinists even deny any personal responsibility for human actions. Determinists are usually adherents of materialism, although some social or economic determinists are more influenced by Marxism than by the advance of physics, chemistry, and biology. In popular use, determinism has connotations of fatalism. In more technical discussions, determinism is sometimes called necessitarianism. The term is to be contrasted with libertarianism.