Just as Democritus' intuition of atoms in a void was confirmed by modern physics, so Epicurus' swerve (the "clinamen") has been confirmed by quantum physics.
So Epicurus' intuition of a fundamental randomness was correct. We call the real physical determinism we have in the world " adequate determinism" to distinguish it from predeterminism, with its causal chain going back to the origin of the universe. The paths of such large objects are only statistically determined, albeit with negligible randomness.
"Deterministic" paths are only the case for very large objects, where the statistical laws of atomic physics average to become nearly certain dynamical laws for billiard balls and planets. Everything in the material universe is made of atoms in unstoppable perpetual motion.
Parenthetically, we now know that atoms do not occasionally swerve, they are moving unpredictably whenever they are in close contact with other atoms or interacting with radiation. Epicurus wanted to break the causal chain of physical determinism and deny claims that the future is logically necessary. One generation after Aristotle, Epicurus argued that as atoms move through the void, there are occasions when they might "swerve" from their otherwise determined paths, thus initiating new causal chains - with a causa sui or uncaused cause. Ă*l�c���)�ڵ��~����}_^�u�O� Mb��!���� �p 2Ia��̝��� �� �~*g�i�.Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposium ProcSet>/Subtype/Form/Type/XObject>stream Tat)/Rect/Subj(Typewritten Text)/Subtype/FreeText/T(Theo)/Type/Annot>
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