Causation in science

220 Pages·2018·1.586 MB·English

by  Ben-Menahem, Yemima

Causation in Science

Causation in Science
Yemima Ben- Menahem
Princeton University Press
Princeton & Oxford
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ISBN 978-0-691-17493-8
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In memory of my parents
Elizabeth and Joseph Goldschmidt

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 From Causal Relations to Causal Constraints 1
2 Determinism and Stability 35
3 Determinism and Stability in Physics 61
4 Determinism and Locality 82
5 Symmetries and Conservation Laws 105
6 The Principle of Least Action: From Teleology
to Causality 134
7 Causation and Reduction 158
References 183
Index 193
vii

Preface
The concepts of truth and causation, generally taken for
granted in daily discourse, have engaged philosophers throughout his-
tory. With regard to both these concepts, the disparity between appear-
ance and reality, and the difficulty of clearly delineating one from the
other, threaten to subvert the uncritical stance of common sense. More-
over, in discourse about causation, as in discourse about truth, human
language, with its categories, descriptions, ambiguities, and metaphors,
seems to stand in the way of an objective, mind- independent grasp of
reality. This obstacle, though recognized by earlier philosophers, came
to the fore at the turn of the twentieth century, when developments in
logic, mathematics, science, and philosophy converged into the philo-
sophical orientation known as the “linguistic turn.” Radical manifesta-
tions of the concern about language’s role in epistemology went so far
as to call for the rejection of truth and objectivity, and their replacement
by notions such as definitions, conventions, fictions, and narratives.
This linguistic challenge to truth (the subject of my Conventionalism)
will not concern us here.
The linguistic turn is also evident in twentieth- century philosophy’s
focus on the theory of meaning in general, and on the meanings of cer-
tain core concepts, such as causation, explanation, virtue, and liberty.
The importance of these meaning- oriented projects notwithstanding,
in the case of causation, the ongoing debates about its definition have
diverted attention from other issues, and in particular, from the various
ways in which causal notions function in contemporary science. Atten-
tion to scientific practice led me to the conclusion that the notion of
causal constraint is far more germane than that of causal relations be-
tween individual events. This book is therefore structured around a fam-
ix