ToKers/TOKers:
At the risk of getting ahead of myself (i.e. before Gregg returns), let me start the conversation about *causality* by piggy-backing on our discussion about the "ToK Stack" and its relationship with "science."
In his Metaphysics (4th-century BC), Aristotle details four causes: Material, Kinetic, Final and Formal. Yes, I know that the second of these has commonly called "efficient" in English (probably since the 17th century) but, for various reasons, we are changing that to "kinetic" (although perhaps "mechanistic" would also fit.)
Here are the correspondences (denoted by "~", not equals or "=") that I would suggest --
ToK Stack
CULTURE ~ Sociology/Economics/Political Science/Anthropology ~ Formal Cause
MIND ~ Psychology ~ Final Cause
LIFE ~ Biology ~ Kinetic Cause
MATTER ~ Physics ~ Material Cause
All of these causes were actively engaged and widely understood in the 13th/14th/15th centuries in Europe -- particularly after Aristotle was translated into Latin (sometimes from Greek, sometimes from Arabic) -- but their usage fell-off precipiticiously following the invention of the Printing Press and the expansion of its "paradigmatic" effects in the 16th/17th centuries (aka the "Enlightenment").
In particular, in as much as what we think of as "science" requires *mechanisms* (as John has been reminding us) -- since the goal is engineering -- this could be thought of as the result of the Royal Society of London, which explicitly banned all discussion of "religion and metaphysics" in its 1660 by-laws -- effectively banning all discussion that involved "final" and "formal" causes.
Leibniz -- who attempted to establish rival groups in Berlin and St. Petersburg (which would likely not have had those restrictions) -- made a promise to the London group: he would deliver to them a "calculating engine," which some today use to credit him with inventing "computers" (and a newly fabricated copy of which now sits in a case outside the chairman's office at IBM, where I've visited it). That's *kinetic* cause. However, as we know from his life, what he was really trying to accomplish was a "universal language" (to replace Latin) and "linquistics" (unless it is reduced to "mechanisms") is *formal* cause.
Newton, Leibniz's rival and a stalwart of the London group, is famous for his "Laws of Motion" -- which is to say, *kinetic* causality. However, as those who have studied Newton know, not only was he an aggressive Alchemist (which is "formal cause," pointing to why John uses it as an insult) and he spent much more of his time poring over the Bible to try to figure out the timing of the 2nd Coming (which is "final cause") than he did on his mathematics (which is why Leibniz published first on the Calculus).
If we limit ourselves to Material and Kinetic causes, we will get as far as Physics (MATTER) and Biology (LIFE) but no further. To rise to the "level" of Psychology (or MIND), we will have to consider what happens to LIFE when it becomes "self-aware" in the sense that humans show that power -- which means including *final* causality (i.e. what for humans we now call "mythology" or "how does all this end"?). To be sure, there is a "psychology" that uses *material* cause (i.e. "complexity science"), with some *kinetic* causality thrown in, which is called "cognitive psychology" (i.e. the dominant mode today, responsible for modeling humans on computers.) Not a drop of either *final* or *formal* involved there at all.
I remember having dinner with Jim Rutt (and his wife and my girlfriend) last year when all this came up. Jim is a "manager" (not a researcher) who is particularly good at remembering what others have studied, who was brought into the Santa Fe Institute to put Humpty-Dumpty-back-together-again after they were spinning around way off-in-the-weeds. He told me that he'd never heard of these terms and would only allow me to discuss them if I could "reduce" them to the Material/Kinetic causes he already understood.
Then, when he got frustrated about the direction the discussion was going on the Rally Point Alpha group he started on Facebook, he tossed me and my friends off the group -- which then quickly imploded and has now collapsed. Gee, I wonder what "caused" that to happen . . . <g>
Yes, I know that John has told us that MIND and CULTURE can be explained by *kinetic* causes alone but I suspect that few on this list would agree. These "upper" levels of the "ToK Stack" need something more and, indeed, I would suggest that the reason why these "social sciences" are in such bad shape today is precisely because they are so "causally ignorant" (given the currently limited "scientific" approaches).
To restore these upper levels -- which has become far more urgent now that we are living in a *new* paradigm -- an expansion of our understanding of causality is required. I look forward to Gregg's contribution to this discussion soon . . . !!
Mark