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Man, since he is a part of the universe, is inevitably involved with causality. As a cognitive part of the universe, he has discovered causality, defined it, and used it as a basis for the construction of an intricate and compelling world of applied science and for dizzying reaches of speculative research.

Scientists today, after toying with the idea of absolute causality, actually work with laws of probability. There is thus a differentiation between the concept of causality, which is a philosophical question, and workable laws which are a statistical fact. In other words, instead of an if-then always relationship, we have an if-then in a certain percentage relationship. It is possible that there exists ultimate causality, but because we cannot have knowledge of the entire causal structure, scientists dispense with worrying about the ideal and continue to base their findings upon probability. For general expository purposes, however, we will refer to causality as an accepted principle in the physical world and leave the statistical niceties alone. After all, without the concept of causality to work from, where would the quantum theory be?

The impact of causality on the western world has long been powerful, as witness the reliance of rationalist philosophers upon causal laws to explain the logical necessity of their systems. Bolstered by the discoveries of modern science, the concept of causality tended to dominate western thinking and fostered a mechanistic view of the world (until recently when a dynamic view of the universe has supplanted a static one).

It is not in the physical world that the laws of causality present difficulty. The fact that the scientist does not know with absolute certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow or that the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen will continue in a random, disordered arrangement so that the air will continue to be breathable does not give him undue concern. The laws of causality (or of probability) may be disputed, they may be amended or their applicability questioned, but they are never ignored. They are always a part of the scheme of things. It is in the semantic transferral of a "relative absolute" like causality to the rigid framework of linguistic reference that man falls into the...

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