The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical: I show how a question (scientific determinism), which would have been labelled as nonsensical according to the Vienna Circle's "Scientific World Conception", was very much of interest for William James and Charles Peirce, who were deeply involved in scientific practice. The second aim is a historico-philosophical one: I reconstruct James' and Peirce's positions on scientific determinism and relate them to a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Boutroux, Bergson, Poincaré).