 Even if Diderot’s conception of body and brain indicate that he is not treating them in terms of basic physics alone, he holds the existence of causal relations to be fundamental; as he writes, “‘Every cause is an effect’ seems axiomatic to me” (DPV XXIV: 309). Without this foundationally construed sense of causality, Nature would constantly be taking leaps, which he thinks is a mistaken vision of things. In other words, he is committed to a form of determinism.