Do Explanation Formats in Chemistry Depend on Agent Causality?
Rom Harré `Causality’ is the name for the relation between cause and effect. However, there is no agreement as to the nature of this relation. Is causality the production or generation of effects by material agents, the Aristotelian view; or is it no more than a regular concomitance between pairs of events of similar types leading to an expectation of the occurrence of a consequent event, as Hume argued? Or some more up to date version of the Humean notion of causality as a relation between events? The philosophy of chemistry has inherited this problem `space’. Should we follow the ideas of Aristotle or those of Hume? One would have thought that by the beginning of the third millennium the issue would have been settled. Recent attempts by followers of the Aristotelian plan have revived the concept of causal power. These attempts have included analyses of the logical form of attributions of causal powers (Cheng, 1978 and Hiddleston, 2005). However, it is well to remind ourselves of the
