The principle of causality and the possibility of its empirical confirmation

pp. 345-371

in: Hans Reichenbach, Selected writings 1909–1953, Berlin, Springer, 1978

Abstract

The problematic nature of the discussion of causality is due to the fact that the term "causality" covers a number of principles that are generally not sufficient distinguished, even though they constitute completely different assertions. One might slmost say that, in its most general form, the principle of causality merely designates the scientific method of ordering given observational data in a certain way, and thus leads to the assertion that there is a certain regularity in nature. In this form, which neglects the various ways in which scientific dta are ordered, the assertion is not accessible to precise analysis. Therefore, all critics of the principles of causality have tried to formulate it in a more exact manner, with the result that they have always dealt only with part of the complex, although perhaps the most important one. In order to avoid the mistaken view that these investigations exhaust the total content of the complex, we shall first give a brief survey of the various principles which are subsumed under the concept of causality.