Cause and Effect
Is there a cause for every effect? For centuries, philosophers have discussed this question. Two eminent 18th-century philosophers, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, argued back and forth about the nature of events. Are experience and observation an integral part of our knowledge of the world? Or can we know things simply by thinking about them? On the one hand, it seems self-evident that until we have seen the consequence of a particular action in nature, we cannot know what will happen. 1Drop sentence here. But once an effect in nature is seen or experienced, can we induce a universal law, arguing from example to rule, that any similar cause will have a predictable similar effect?
Apples fall to the ground. 2Drop sentence here. At the time of Hume and Kant, people were still struggling with the underlying science of gravity, but no observations were ever in conflict with the relationship, which Hume called a ‘constant conjunction’. Kant said that the notion of cause and effect was the ‘mechanism of nature’, but he also said we could not know how it worked.
So causes have necessary effects and, in many cases, also contingent effects which have their own causes. I drop a glass and it falls. 3Drop sentence here. The fall results in the contingent effect of the glass shattering, because glass, unlike apples, cannot absorb much energy before it fractures.
Science has moved on since the 18th century, and we are now close to understanding how many mechanisms in nature work. 4Drop sentence here. Scientists in every discipline are solving the cause and effect relationship apparent in their fields. Astronomers, for example, are moving further and further back in time, from observable effects to theorised causes, to account for the formation of the universe.
But in many cases, each answer to ‘why’ leads to another question. 5Drop sentence here. Why does an element behave in a certain way? Because of its atomic structure. But why do the atoms move with Brownian motion? Because the subatomic particles are in motion. Eventually, we get down to the level of quantum physics where, scientists tell us, an effect sometimes precedes its cause. This, of course, is a complete paradox.
A final thought. Can the effect sometimes be the cause? 6Drop sentence here. The post asked readers to imagine a person is filling a sink with water. Even a child knows that this is done by controlling the tap with one’s hand, gradually slowing the flow of water as the sink nears its capacity. But is the hand really controlling the tap, or is the flow of water controlling the hand? Some management theorists now say that effects in markets are the cause of business decisions rather than the other way round.