Causation Quotes

“It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation).”

“You are telling me that I did something because I was going to do something.”“Well, didn’t you? You were there.”“No, I didn’t—no… well, maybe I did, but it didn’t feel like it.”“Why should you expect it to? It was something totally new to your experience.”“But… but—” Wilson took a deep breath and got control of himself. Then he reached back into his academic philosophical concepts and produced the notion he had been struggling to express. “It denies all reasonable theories of causation. You would have me believe that causation can be completely circular. I went through because I came back from going through to persuade myself to go through. That’s silly.”“Well, didn’t you?”

“The principle of any science is invisible, theoretical, as is our idea of Spirit. No one has seen God; no one has seen Life; what we have seen is the manifestation of Life. No one has seen Intelligence; we experience it. No one has ever seen Causation; we can see what It does, we deal with Its effects. We do not see Beauty. The artist feels beauty and depicts it as best he can, and the result of his effort is what we call the beautiful...We do not see Life, we experience living. Causation is invisible.”

“Things that look like they were designed, probably were... If intelligence is an operative component of the universe, a science that methodologically excludes its existence will be susceptible to being trapped in an endless chase for materialistic causes that do not exist... Where there are sufficient grounds for inferring intelligent causation, based on evidence of "specified complexity," it should be considered as a component of scientific theories.Inclusion of intelligent causation in the scientific equation is not novel and has not impeded the practice of science in the past, e.g. Newton and Kepler, in an age when science was not constrained by a philosophical materialism, and by many current scientists who have remained open to following the evidence where it leads.”

“The scientific study of suffering inevitably raises questions of causation, and with these, issues of blame and responsibility. Historically, doctors have highlighted predisposing vulnerability factors for developing PTSD, at the expense of recognizing the reality of their patients' experiences… This search for predisposing factors probably had its origins in the need to deny that all people can be stressed beyond endurance, rather than in solid scientific data; until recently such data were simply not available… When the issue of causation becomes a legitimate area of investigation, one is inevitably confronted with issues of man's inhumanity to man, with carelessness and callousness, with abrogation of responsibility, with manipulation and with failures to protect.”

“God's existence needs to be established independently before he can be brought into account for causation”

“Acknowledging the important role of the emotions in health and illness, medicine must reexamine its concepts of disease causation.”

“In any miracle, chase the causation back far enough and eventually you'll find yourself irrepressibly singing in praise of the marvelous goodness of God's creation.”

“As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.”

“Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for and is therefore right in postulating may be enveloped in a wider order on which she has no claim at all.”