WTF is causality anyway?

[UnseenParticipant]

Things don’t just happen. They happen…because. Or that’s what we typically believe.

We have come to understand the basic forces and how they operate on reality. How they work is still being explored way down in what’s been called the “particle zoo” as we discover important particles beyond and beneath protons, electrons, and neutrons.

We’re finding that there are particles responsible for mass and we are working to find the likely particle responsible for gravity.

Might there be a particle for causality? Or is causality just a feature that comes along with the stuff of the universe and the laws that seem to govern that stuff? Something not even needing to be understood because it can’t? A so-called “primitive concept,” in other words.

Since we depend dearly on the regularity of causality, should we be concerned that it might disappear at some time or in some places or situations? In other words, is it necessary for causality to exist and to be universal? or might it be merely incidental? After all, the laws of physics we know did not always exist at the inception of the universe. For example, the cap on the speed of light seems not to have existed for a while in a state we call “inflation.”

Could we slip into a new phase of the universe at any moment, into a more chaotic one with undependable causality (which would make science irrelevant) or no causality, in which case the universe would cease to exist?

Philosophers discuss and attempt to explain causality (aka causation).

• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by  Unseen.

[Author]

Posts