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Causation Quotes

Browse 80 quotes about Causation.

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Causation Quotes

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”

ThinkingTruthUnderstandingNatureWonderKnowledgeIgnoranceAuthorityPhilosopherFoolishPreservationGodsMiraclesAdorationHeresyPietyAstonishmentCauseFoolsMobCausationStareInterpretThe GodsHereticalImpious
Book:Ethics
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“In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him — if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking — then you could not have a game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any such life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

LifeSufferingFree WillWillConsequencesRulesLawsCausation
Book:The Problem of Pain
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“Most of you will have heard the maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other does not mean that one is responsible for the other. For instance, ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don't light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Haagan-Dazs.”

CorrelationCausation
Book:The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't
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“Network theory confirms the view that information can take on 'a life of its own'. In the yeast network my colleagues found that 40 per cent of node pairs that are correlated via information transfer are not in fact physically connected; there is no direct chemical interaction. Conversely, about 35 per cent of node pairs transfer no information between them even though they are causally connected via a 'chemical wire' (edge). Patterns of information traversing the system may appear to be flowing down the 'wires' (along the edges of the graph) even when they are not. For some reason, 'correlation without causation' seems to be amplified in the biological case relative to random networks.”

InformationCorrelationNetworkCausationYeast
Book:The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
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“Lyell and Poulett Scrope, in this country, resumed the work of the Italians and of Hutton; and the former, aided by a marvellous power of clear exposition, placed upon an irrefragable basis the truth that natural causes are competent to account for all events, which can be proved to have occurred, in the course of the secular changes which have taken place during the deposition of the stratified rocks. The publication of 'The Principles of Geology,' in 1830, constituted an epoch in geological science. But it also constituted an epoch in the modern history of the doctrines of evolution, by raising in the mind of every intelligent reader this question: If natural causation is competent to account for the not-living part of our globe, why should it not account for the living part?”

TruthScienceNaturalHistoryPowerEvolutionIntelligentDoctrineSecularGeologyNaturalismMarvellousCausationExpositionHuttonJames HuttonCharles LyellLyellGeorge Julius Poulett ScropeIrrefragablePoulett ScropeScropeThe Principles Of Geology
Book:Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
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“Quantum fluctuations are, at their root, completely a-causal, in the sense that cause and effect and ordering of events in time is not a part of how these fluctuations work. Because of this, there seem not to be any correlations built into these kinds of fluctuations because 'law' as we understand the term requires some kind of cause-and-effect structure to pre-exist. Quantum fluctuations can precede physical law, but it seems that the converse is not true. So in the big bang, the establishment of 'law' came after the event itself, but of course even the concept of time and causality may not have been quite the same back then as they are now.”

ScienceUniversePhysicsQuantumCause And EffectCosmologyQuantum MechanicsLawsSingularityBig BangCausationFluctuationsQuantum FluctuationsA Causal
Author:Sten F. Odenwald
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“It’s actually funny that science lays claim to randomness since no one has ever seen a random event. Scientists interpret events as random rather than causal because of their dogmatic ideology. Their paradigm forbids them from referring to unobservable causal processes – implying a reality more fundamental than science which science cannot penetrate – but accepts randomness, as the least threat to science’s supremacy, even though, in Hume’s terms, randomness is no more empirical than causation, hence no more scientifically valid, and infinitely less rational!”

PhilosophyScienceDogmaRandomnessEmpiricismCausationIndeterminism
Book:Universals Versus Particulars: The Ultimate Intellectual War
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“The careful observations and the acute reasonings of the Italian geologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the speculations of Leibnitz in the 'Protogaea' and of Buffon in his 'Théorie de la Terre;' the sober and profound reasonings of Hutton, in the latter part of the eighteenth century; all these tended to show that the fabric of the earth itself implied the continuance of processes of natural causation for a period of time as great, in relation to human history, as the distances of the heavenly bodies from us are, in relation to terrestrial standards of measurement. The abyss of time began to loom as large as the abyss of space. And this revelation to sight and touch, of a link here and a link there of a practically infinite chain of natural causes and effects, prepared the way, as perhaps nothing else has done, for the modern form of the ancient theory of evolution.”

ScienceTimeSpaceHistoryEvolutionCarefulObservationReasoningAbyssNaturalismCausationLeibnizBuffonHuttonJames HuttonGeologistsGottfried LeibnizGottfried Wilhelm LeibnizComte De BuffonGeorges Louis LeclercGottfried W Leibniz
Book:Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
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“The effort to eliminate synthetic pesticides because of unsubstantiated fears about residues in food will make fruits and vegetables more expensive, decrease consumption, and thus increase cancer rates. The levels of synthetic pesticide residues are trivial in comparison to natural chemicals, and thus their potential for cancer causation is extremely low. [Ames believes that "to eat your veggies" is the best way to prevent cancer.]”

WayBelieveScienceNaturalLevelsEffortLowsIncreaseFruitRateCancerBest WayExpensiveComparisonChemicalsVegetablesConsumptionDecreaseSyntheticFruits And VegetablesCausationPesticides
Author:Bruce Ames
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“Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.”

WorldNaturalPracticeMaterialsTheoryEvolutionBasesStructureAgricultureAdaptationTheory Of EvolutionCausation
Book:Soviet Biology: Report to the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences
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“... if we say that the Father is the origin of the Son and greater than the Son, we do not suggest any precedence in time or superiority in nature of the Father over the Son (cf. Jn. 14:28)? or superiority in any other respect save causation. And we mean by this, that the Son is begotten of the Father and not the Father of the Son, and that the Father naturally is the cause of the Son.”

IfsMeanChristianFatherCausesGreaterSonOrthodoxSuperiorityOrthodox ChristianCfsPrecedenceCausation
Author:Pope Clement I
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“Science was tearing through the 'fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs' to behold a new cosmos, in which our Earth is merely an 'eccentric speck' - a world of evolution 'and unchanging causation'. It invited new ways of thinking. It demanded a new rationale for belief. With science's truths the only accessible ones, 'blind faith' was no longer admirable but 'the one unpardonable sin'.”

ThinkingWorldWayEarthBeliefSinFineEvolutionBlindCosmosNew WaysInvitedWay Of ThinkingAdmirableEccentricBlind FaithUnchangingSpunSpecksRationaleCausationCobwebsNew Ways Of Thinking
Author:Adrian Desmond
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“[G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of chemical processes. Genes do not make "novelty seeking" or any other complex and overt behavior. Predisposition via a long chain of complex chemical reactions, mediated through a more complex series of life's circumstances, does not equal identification or even causation.”

LongDoeProcessCircumstancesEqualBehaviorSeriesComplexesRateSeekingReactionsChainsChemicalsGenesNoveltyIdentificationCausationChemical ReactionsEnzymes
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis -beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.”

MindStatesFeelingsBodySpiritualValuesBeliefReligiousTheoryFlowClaimsDoctrineSuperiorsRevelationsExceptionState Of MindOur ThoughtsConnectingArbitraryPsychoThoughts And FeelingsIllogicalPhysiologicalCausationSpiritual ValuesRefutation
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
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“I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's. At that time I was a skeptic - the argument based on Koch's postulates to try to distinguish between cause and association. Today I would regard the success of the many antiviral agents which lower the virus titers (to be expected) and also resolve the failure of the immune system (only expected if the virus is the cause of the failure) as a reasonable proof of the causation argument .”

IfsTryingTodayCausesLateArgumentRegardExpectedProofAgentsReasonableResolveCommentAssociationVirusesImmuneSkepticImmune SystemCausation
Author:Walter Gilbert
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“Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied.”

Has BeensLanguageForceSpacePathEvolutionResearchConceptsScientistIncludingAgencyConstructionHandfulLiteralCognitiveCausation
Book:How the Mind Works
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“However inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas and feelings have it, than the Automatists are when they say they haven't it. As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of metaphysical criticism all causes are obscure. But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only . . . whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born.”

IfsMayIdeasFeelingsNightCausesBornHalfDarknessSubjectsHavensMaterialsCatCriticismMarkBreathsWideGrayObscurePsychicsMetaphysicalInadequateEfficacyCausationHume
Book:The Principles of Psychology
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“That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born.”

KnowsMenWayShouldMeanIdeasEndsLawBornSleepKnow HowFireExperienceAffairSeedsConfusionManageObservationUncertaintyDiscoveringHarvestInfantLaws Of NatureReapGrown ManCausationConnexion
Book:Principles of Human Knowledge
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“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is basedon induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”

IfsNeedsWritingPhilosophyScienceWrittenMagicPleaseResearchExpectationsUniversalConstitutionInvisibleManifestationAnticipationMetaphysicalPresumptionLatentMediationCausation
Book:Darwinism: Being an Examination of Mr. St. George Mivart's 'Genesis of Species'
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“The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.”

WorldValuesIndividualCausesTermDifferencesModernChangedBehaviorAbsolutesPatternsCommittedPhysicsCertaintyConsistentAppropriateQuantumPreferenceParticlesPredictableQuantum PhysicsImpliedCausationAbsolute Certainty
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence, and that One Existence, when it passes through the forms of time, space, causation, is called by different names, buddhi, fine matter, gross matter, all mental and physical forms. Everything in the universe is that One, appearing in various forms. When a little part of it comes, as it were, into this network of time, space and causation, it takes forms. Take off the network, and it is all one.”

LittlesDifferentSelfMatterWholeFormUniverseNamesSpaceExistenceFineVariousGrossAppearingCausationDifferent Names
Book:Living at the Source: Yoga Teachings of Vivekananda
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“The whole idea of what is evidence for causation in epidemiology cannot be separated from tTindustry understood that if they could raise doubt about how you could conclude something caused cancer, that they put so much effort into getting so many receptive public health authorities to say, "Well, causation requires that these five things be met." So that is, in fact, nonsense.”

IfsWellsIdeasWholeFactsEffortDoubtFiveMetsAuthorityUnderstoodEvidenceRaisesCancerNonsensePublic HealthReceptiveCausationEpidemiology
Author:Devra Davis
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“Olympics are three times more likely to be employed than people of a similar age, ethnic and socioeconomic status who have not been participating. It's a correlation, not a causation as far as the statisticians go, but the fascinating question is; Is there something in participation in sports, in community-building, confidence building, self-image-building, strength building, social networking - that greatly enhance employability?”

PeopleSelfAgeThreeSocialSportsCommunityBuildingFascinatingOlympicsParticipationEmployedThree TimesNetworkingSocial NetworkingParticipatingSocial NetworkCorrelationStatisticianCausationConfidence BuildingCommunity BuildingBuilding ConfidenceSocioeconomic Status
Author:Timothy Shriver
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