causality

Not everyone found that a satisfactory answer. In 1932, Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics stepped in with intent to clarify the matter, clearly irritated that ‘We all talk about the same things, but we have not yet agreed what it is we are talking about.’ He claimed to have a definitive answer. ‘Economics,’ he declared, ‘is the scien

One thing is said to be the cause of another thing because (a) it explains the very existence of that thing, or (b) it explains why the thing exists in this or that particular way, the “mode” of its existence.

We look for the underlying, hidden causes of events. We try to figure out the nature of things. It’s not just that we human beings can do this; we need to do it. We seem to have a kind of explanatory drive, like our drive for food or sex. When we’re presented with a puzzle, a mystery, a hint of a pattern, something that doesn’t quite make sense, we

As rational animals, human beings naturally desire to know the truth about reality. As Aristotle puts it at the beginning of The Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.”

There are two kinds of causes, those that are intelligent, and those that, being moved by others, are, in turn, compelled to move others. The former are endowed with mind, and are the workers of things fair and good, while the latter produce chance effects without order or design.