- the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.
- the doctrine that all events, including human choices and decisions, have sufficient causes.
- the philosophical doctrine that all events including human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and states of affairs, and so that freedom of choice is illusory
- the scientific doctrine that all occurrences in nature take place in accordance with natural laws
- the principle in classical mechanics that the values of dynamic variables of a system and of the forces acting on the system at a given time, completely determine the values of the variables at any later time
