The estrangement and frequent mutual incomprehension existing between theology and the sciences today reflects chiefly cultural phenomena, arising from particular methodological determinations reached by both disciplines in early modernity that, over time, mutated into irreconcilable metaphysical visions. What had been distinct modes of inquiry within a unified intellectual pursuit of a single comprehensive transcendent truth now came to be understood as entirely unrelated bodies of factual knowledge pursuing separate ends. This change, however, involved several logically unsustainable revisions of previous categories: ‘revelation’, ‘science’, and ‘nature’, for instance, and ‘causality,‘ in particular. Yet these developments imposed limits upon both theology and the sciences that inhibited the power of either to understand many of its own claims. Lately, in physics and the life sciences especially, there has been a healthy movement away from purely mechanical models of causality. Whether theology can recover a dimension of scientifically informed natural philosophy is yet to be seen. But if the two cultures can be disencumbered of their early modern metaphysical prejudices, they might find that they naturally converge upon a shared horizon of ultimate explanation that provides each with its animating logic and reveals each to be only a limited mode of that final wisdom.

Chapter 2 is about the social and semiotic mediation of causal grounds. In particular, the way people come to understand and alter the sequencing of events or the channeling of forces. Focusing on the multiple processes that mediate people’s understandings of landslides in a Mayan village in highland Guatemala, it shows the ways causal grounds relate to physical forces, communicative practices, and social conventions. It highlights the political, economic, affective, and ecological stakes at work in such forms of mediation.

In this chapter, the metaphysics of quantum possibilities, as a form of res potentia, is discussed. The transactional picture, together with quantum possibility, can be understood in terms of Kant’s contrast between phenomena and noumena, with quantum possibility constituting an element of the noumenal realm. This formulation sheds light on the connection between the two realms. It also provides a “middle way” between realism and antirealism and resolves puzzles surrounding the notion of causation. Concerns about structural realism are also addressed.

Chapter 4 contends with the Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment and the discursivity of the understanding. It argues that a discursive understanding must think of the empirical world as ordered by an ideal system of universal concepts, which takes the form of a complete hierarchical taxonomy: from the most general empirical concepts to ever more specific concepts. It argues further that the assumption of a comprehensive hierarchy of concepts determining the sensibly given is Kant’s way of talking about the objective order of nature. Only the complete but unattainable determination of the sensibly given by a complete system of concepts can ground the claims to objectivity made in determinative judgments. Kant ultimately thinks of such a system and its concepts as not merely descriptive but as causally informative and thus explanatory as well. It is a transcendental condition of empirical experience and knowledge, which follows from the fact that we are discursive creatures in pursuit of objective knowledge. An important consequence is that empirical knowledge claims are always revisable and indeed defeasible. A further very important argument shows that the part-to-whole or mechanistic form of physical explanation is also grounded in the discursivity of our understanding.

It is an extremely well-established experimental fact that the speed of light is the same for all “inertial observers” (those who do not undergo accelerations). The analysis of the consequences of this remarkable fact has forced a complete revision of Newton’s ideas: Space and time are not different entities but are different aspects of one single entity, space-time. Different inertial observers may use different coordinates to describe the points of space-time, but these coordinates must be related in a way that preserves the speed of light. The changes of coordinates between observers form a group, the Lorentz group. To a large extent the mathematics of Special Relativity reduce to the study of this group. Physics appears to respect causality, a strong constraint in the presence of a finite speed of light. We introduce the Poincaré group, related to the Lorentz group. We develop Wigner’s idea that to each elementary particle is associated an irreducible unitary representation of the Poincaré group and we describe the representation corresponding to a spinless massive particle, explaining also how the physicists view these matters.

We explain why the existence of a true position operator is a dubious proposition.

The chapter aims to show how many conceptual points of the classical-Keynesian analysis are essentially based on a suitable interaction between causal and interdependent relationships. Throughout the analysis, the terms ‘causality’ and ‘interdependence’ are interpreted following the interpretation given by Herbert Simon as analytical characteristics of the relations between the magnitudes involved in the theory, rather than a feature of economic reality. A meticulous work of revisiting the analytical formulations of some important foundations of both classical and Keynesian theories has been presented here to bring to the surface the sequential or the simultaneous nature of the determination of the main variables and the economic meaning attached to these analytical properties.

Introducing the Minkowski diagram and Minkowski space; how do we represent motion? And how can we represent the phenomena of length contraction and time dilation graphically?

This chapter highlights methods for estimating causality in the health and behavioral sciences, with an emphasis on methods that have been utilized in the study of recovery from alcohol use disorder. Emphasis is placed on the role of design as a necessary component in teasing out causal relationships, with the ideal approach being an experimental approach with a randomization component. In the absence of experimental design, researchers often turn to observational studies. In such cases, it is necessary to turn to quasi-experimental designs, two of which are highlighted herein: regression discontinuity and interrupted time series designs. Additionally, disadvantages of propensity scores are discussed, psychometric network modeling is described, and software packages for implementing these methods are highlighted.

The chapter turns to consider two key implications of the environmental minimum for international environmental law. For one, there is considerable difficulty in applying the human rights-based framework of the book to issues surrounding transboundary environmental harm, particularly the overarching global issue of man-made climate change. Due to enduring difficulties establishing causality, as well as temporal, geographic concerns, and the at most lacklustre commitment of most states to upholding them as practical safeguards, human rights are unlikely to contribute decisively to the current policy debate. The environmental minimum and its human rights framework presuppose a robust commitment to human rights, environmental protection and the rule of law that is questionable at best with respect to many of the most notorious global polluters. The environmental minimum is more suited to specifying the scope, context, and relationship of competing environmental obligations, notably among the sustainable development goals, as well as provide a viable framework to enforce otherwise non-binding or underenforced treaty obligations under international environmental law.

Chapter 8 concludes the book with a substantive discussion of a key puzzle in the comparative politics and political economy literature: Is property security a cause or consequence of political order? Much of the property rights literature views the creation of legal rights as a solution to what ails society, such as underinvestment, both public and private. Investment, in turn, is understood to be likely to result in prosperity and eventually political order. In our conclusion, we argue that it makes more sense to conceptualize political order and political institutions that limit the scope of government as a cause rather than consequence of property security. This conclusion does not deny the possibility of self-governance. But it does mean that the creation of legal rights requires that we think clearly about features of the state. The straightforward implication of our analysis is that the domestic and international policymakers should scale back land titling, relying instead on communities until there is progress in establishing robust, inclusive political institutions at higher levels of government.