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Understanding the Cause-and-Effect Principles
about cause-and-effect relationships, coupled with our ability to act upon
the causes within the relationships, the better our problem-solving skills. No
matter how complex the causal relationships, be they mere feelings or hard
scientific facts, the problem-solving process is always the same—understand
the causal relationships, determine which ones you have control of, and act
on them in a manner that meets your goals.
In the past, scholars tried to understand causation by labeling and
categorizing different kinds of causes. Attorneys use proximate cause
and probable cause. Safety engineers use surface causes, causal factors,
apparent causes, and root causes. Aristotle had his four causes—efficient,
material, formal, and final, which make no sense at all in today’s world. By
categorizing we create boundaries or boxes that define the category based
on our own belief system. Because we all have different belief systems,
categorization models immediately set up a quarrelsome environment.
To avoid this, it is my goal here to discuss the principles of cause and
effect without categorizing different types other than what is required to
understand the principles of causation.
So, what is a cause and what is an effect, but more importantly, what
is their relationship to reality This simple notion of cause and effect is easy
enough to grasp as the child did in the spoon drop experiment. However, as
we will discover herein, there is much more to this fundamental idea than
has ever been explained. Let’s look at the four principles of causation so
that we can understand their structure and how they present themselves.
Cause-and-Effect Principium
The cause-and-effect principium includes four principles:
1. Cause and effect are the same thing.
2. Each effect has at least two causes in the form of actions and
conditions.
3. Causes and effects are part of an infinite continuum of causes.
4. An effect exists only if its causes exist in the same space and time
frame.
Cause and Effect Are the Same Thing
When we look closely at causes and effects, we see that a “cause”
and an “effect” are the same thing, or as others have stated, a single thing
may be both a cause and an effect. They differ only by how we perceive
them in time. When we start with an effect and ask why it occurred, we
find a cause; but if we ask why again, what was just now a cause becomes
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