ABSTRACT
The notion of causality has had a bad press from the epistemologists, as Herbert Simon once remarked. They prefer to substitute the idea of interdependence or functional relation. The major problem is a definitional one. Although cause is conceived as prior to effect, the two are often observed simultaneously. Cause is also difficult to reconcile with the ideas of classical logic about implication (necessary conditions, sufficient conditions, necessary and sufficient conditions). For example, the increase in the English birth rate between 1840 and 1870 is the cause of the increase in population during the period. But it is not a necessary condition (since the increased population could have occurred as a result of decreased mortality rates). Neither is it a sufficient condition (since its effects could have been counterbalanced by an increase in the mortality rate).
