#causation

Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on. ↗

— Citium Zeno

#chain #endless #fate #formula #goes

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). ↗

— Steven Pinker

#evolution #natural-selection #teleology #nature

The great unity which true science seeks is found only by beginning with our knowledge of God, and coming down from Him along the stream of causation to every fact and event that affects us. ↗

— Howard Crosby

#along #beginning #causation #coming #down

From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines. ↗

— Amartya Sen

#causation #i #prevention #started #work

When you shout 'Let there be light!' every morning at dawn, that is when correlation implies creation. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#creation #funny #god #humor #funny

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#causation #cause-and-effect #chance #darwinism #inspirational

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? ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#spacetime #time-travel #experience

When things are in order, if the cause of the orderliness cannot be deduced from the motion of the elements or from the composition of matter, it is quite possibly a cause possessing a mind. ↗

— Johannes Kepler

#cause #id #intelligent-design #kepler #naturalism

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. ↗

— Trofim Lysenko

#advance #agricultural #basis #causation #darwin