IX 



ON THE NOTION OF CAUSE 



IN the following paper I wish, first, to maintain that 

 the word " cause " is so inextricably bound up with 

 misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion 

 from the philosophical vocabulary desirable ; secondly, 

 to inquire what principle, if any, is employed in science 

 in place of the supposed " law of causality " which philo- 

 sophers imagine to be employed ; thirdly, to exhibit 

 certain confusions, especially in regard to teleology and 

 determinism, which appear to me to be connected with 

 erroneous notions as to causality. 



All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causa- 

 tion is one of the fundamental axioms or postulates of 

 science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as 

 gravitational astronomy, the word " cause " never occurs. 

 Dr. James Ward, in his Naturalism and Agnosticism, 

 makes this a ground of complaint against physics : the 

 business of those who wish to ascertain the ultimate truth 

 about the world, he apparently thinks, should be the 

 discovery of causes, yet physics never even seeks them. 

 To me it seems that philosophy ought not to assume such 

 legislative functions, and that the reason why physics 

 has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact, there are no 

 such things. The law of causality, I believe, like much 

 that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a 

 bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because 

 it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. 



