Causality and Spacetime Structure in Relativity

Abstract

The modern idea of causality, dominant since the seventeenth century, contrasts sharply with the earlier acceptation of the termcause (causa, aitia)in the Aristotelian tradition. While the Aristotelian physicist sought for the causes ofthings, and admitted as such anything, be it stuffs or structures, drives or goals, that might reasonably account for the object under study, the modern scientist inquires after the causes ofprocessesorstates of affairs, meaning the agents that bring them about. This drastic change in the sense and scope of one of the fundamental categories of scientific thought has often been said to stem from a change of purpose: modern science, it is said, pursues the domination, not the contemplation of nature. With such an end in mind, the scientist would tend of course to ignore nature’s own ends — if indeed it has any — and to view each natural stuff as nothing but an aggregate of passive and active dispositions to aid or resist man’s aims. However, though the prospective “master and lord of nature”¹might thus free himself from the Aristotelian preoccupation with the so-called final and material causes, it is unlikely that he could direct all his attention to “sources of change”(arkhai tes metaboles)or efficient causes, in utter disregard of form or structure.