---
title: "Causality"
chunk: 9/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:43:20.686725+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== History ====
In the discussion of history, events are sometimes considered as if in some way being agents that can then bring about other historical events. Thus, the combination of poor harvests, the hardships of the peasants, high taxes, lack of representation of the people, and kingly ineptitude are among the causes of the French Revolution. This is a somewhat Platonic and Hegelian view that reifies causes as ontological entities. In Aristotelian terminology, this use approximates to the case of the efficient cause.
Some philosophers of history such as Arthur Danto have claimed that "explanations in history and elsewhere" describe "not simply an event—something that happens—but a change". Like many practicing historians, they treat causes as intersecting actions and sets of actions which bring about "larger changes", in Danto's words: to decide "what are the elements which persist through a change" is "rather simple" when treating an individual's "shift in attitude", but "it is considerably more complex and metaphysically challenging when we are interested in such a change as, say, the break-up of feudalism or the emergence of nationalism".
Much of the historical debate about causes has focused on the relationship between communicative and other actions, between singular and repeated ones, and between actions, structures of action or group and institutional contexts and wider sets of conditions. John Gaddis has distinguished between exceptional and general causes (following Marc Bloch) and between "routine" and "distinctive links" in causal relationships: "in accounting for what happened at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, we attach greater importance to the fact that President Truman ordered the dropping of an atomic bomb than to the decision of the Army Air Force to carry out his orders." He has also pointed to the difference between immediate, intermediate and distant causes. For his part, Christopher Lloyd puts forward four "general concepts of causation" used in history: the "metaphysical idealist concept, which asserts that the phenomena of the universe are products of or emanations from an omnipotent being or such final cause"; "the empiricist (or Humean) regularity concept, which is based on the idea of causation being a matter of constant conjunctions of events"; "the functional/teleological/consequential concept", which is "goal-directed, so that goals are causes"; and the "realist, structurist and dispositional approach, which sees relational structures and internal dispositions as the causes of phenomena".

==== Law ====

According to law and jurisprudence, legal cause must be demonstrated to hold a defendant liable for a crime or a tort (i.e. a civil wrong such as negligence or trespass). It must be proven that causality, or a "sufficient causal link" relates the defendant's actions to the criminal event or damage in question. Causation is also an essential legal element that must be proven to qualify for remedy measures under international trade law.

== History ==

=== Hindu philosophy ===

Vedic period (c. 1750–500 BCE) literature contains early discussions of karma. Karma is the belief held by Hinduism and other Indian religions that a person's actions cause certain effects in the current life and/or in future life, positively or negatively. The various philosophical schools (darshanas) provide different accounts of the subject. A doctrine of satkaryavada affirms that the effect inheres in the cause in some way. The effect is thus either a real or apparent modification of the cause. A doctrine of asatkaryavada affirms that the effect does not inhere in the cause, but is a new arising. In Brahma Samhita, Brahma describes Krishna as the prime cause of all causes.
Bhagavad-gītā 18.14 identifies five causes for any action (knowing which it can be perfected): the body, the individual soul, the senses, the efforts and the supersoul.
According to Monier-Williams, in the Nyāya causation theory from Sutra I.2.I,2 in the Vaisheshika philosophy, from causal non-existence is effectual non-existence; but, not effectual non-existence from causal non-existence. A cause precedes an effect. With a threads and cloth metaphors, three causes are:

Co-inherence cause: resulting from substantial contact, 'substantial causes', threads are substantial to cloth, corresponding to Aristotle's material cause.
Non-substantial cause: Methods putting threads into cloth, corresponding to Aristotle's formal cause.
Instrumental cause: Tools to make the cloth, corresponding to Aristotle's efficient cause.
Monier-Williams also proposed that Aristotle's and the Nyaya's causality are considered conditional aggregates necessary to man's productive work.

=== Buddhist philosophy ===