Fisiese, historiese en logiese kousaliteit1

Abstract

Physical, historical and logical causality

The term causality received special attention during the early modern development ofphilosophy and the natural sciences. It was first of all identified with a deterministic and physicalistic concept of causation which claimed sole jurisdiction over the usage of this term. Due to the eventual reaction to this claim of universal determinism, modern philosophy ventured to safeguard a domain of autonomous freedom which was not subject to the law of causality. The effect of this reaction was that since the dawn of the 'social sciences’ ('Geisteswissenschaften') the widespread conviction emerged that human freedom fundamentally contradicts the true nature of causality. In this study an attempt is made, by using a method of analysing some elementary basic concepts of special sciences, to illustrate in which way this dualistic assessment of causality and freedom could be transcended. This analysis is done by focusing on the relationship between historical and logical causality.