Aequat causa effectum
The Latin phrase aequat causa effectum ('the cause corresponds to the effect') is a scholastic rule about the connection between reason and consequence, according to which the properties of the reason completely determine the properties of the consequence.
meaning
Aequat causa effectum (also causa aequat effectum ) denotes both the assumption that there is quantitative equality between reason and consequence, as well as the assumption that every changed property of the reason must correspond to a changed property of the consequence. Reason and consequence can beunderstoodboth logically , as a conceptual groundingrelationship, but also as an ontological causal relationship. Neither of the two assumptions can, however, be regarded as mandatory without further ado, it is rather a rule of thumb whose validity as a heuristic or as a principle depends on assumptions about what is possible as a cause and consequence.
Reception history
The principle has been discussed as a metaphysical principle since the late Middle Ages at the latest. In philosophy and theology , the rule Aequat causa effectum was occasionally used in the sense of an abduction avant lettre in order to draw conclusions from a known effect on the (unknown or only partially known) cause. Without further prerequisites, these conclusions are only plausible and not logically compelling, so that they can represent false conclusions .
Some proponents of early modern rationalism assumed a similarity or proportionality between cause and caused and thus tried to determine the properties of causes from known properties of the effect. Still René Descartes used the phrase causa aequat effectum for a proof of God . Since Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , a natural-philosophical reading has dominated: Leibniz used the phrase causa aequat effectum in 1695 as a metaphysical law in his theory of movement that demanded not only proportionality, but equality of cause and effect.
The view expressed by Leibniz remained partially into the physics of the 19th century and inspired the idea of the effect of preservation at Robert Mayer , after the causes and effects only convertible phenomena of the same basic object are. Whether this is not a misinterpretation of the rule is questionable; however, this reading has dominated in physical literature since then.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Related formulas can already be found in Nicolaus von Autrecourt (1298–1369), who already assumes the principle is known and wants to restrict it. Cf. Hans-Uwe Wöhler: Dialectics in medieval philosophy . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 163 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ GW Leibniz: Specimen Dynamicum . Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1982, p. 22-23 and 32-33 .
- ↑ "Leibniz excerpted this remark from Wallis and a little later established the principle that the cause is the same as the effect" ( H. Breger : Studia Leibnitiana. Sonderheft 13, 1984, p. 118)
- ↑ Robert Mayer : Comments on the forces of inanimate nature . In: Annals of Chemistry and Pharmacy . 1842, p. 233–240 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ At least that is how Hermann von Helmholtz saw it . Compare by Hermann Helmholtz: Speeches and lectures . tape 1 . Braunschweig 1884 ( limited preview in the Google book search).