Causality and scientific explanation

by William A. Wallace

This major new study in the history and philosophy of science demonstrates how the search for causal explanations influenced scientific writers from the 17th to the 19th century and surveys in detail the status of causality in 20th century science.For the classical period, Wallace analyzes the role of causality in the works of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Comte, Herschel, Whewell, Mill, and Bernard. While various and often imaginative, these works, as Wallace shows, had the net effect of equating causal with mechanical explanation, and so identifying causality with determinism and predictability.The 'decline and fall of causality' was the ultimate consequence of this identification, and it led, in large measure, to the philosophy of science movement, as 20th century science emerged from the ruins of classical science while still in search of a methodology that would justify its results.Professor Wallace proposes that a modern methodology, faithful to the actual practice of scientists, much be less concerned with purely formal logic and more open to realist insights into the natures of showing the surprising use they made of causal concepts in their own now classical contributions.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1981

About the author

Fr. William Augustine Wallace, O.P. taught at a number of institutions throughout his life, including the Dominican Houses of Studies in Springfield, KY, Dover, MA, and Washington, DC, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Maryland. In addition to his teaching and publishing, Fr. Wallace served as the Director General of the Leonine Commission for the editing of the Latin texts of St. Thomas Aquinas from 1976-1987.