The Crisis of Causality

The Crisis of Causality
Author: Han van Ruler
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 367
Release: 1995-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004247203

The Crisis of Causality deals with the reaction of the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) to the New Philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650). Voetius not only criticised the Cartesian idea of a mechanical Universe; he also foresaw that shifting conceptions of natural causality would make it impossible for theologians to explain the relationship between God and Creation in philosophical terms. This threatened the status of theology as a scientific discipline. Apart from a detailed analysis of the Scholastic and Cartesian notions of causality, the book offers new perspectives on related subjects, such as seventeenth-century university training and the Cartesian method of science. It will be of great importance to any student of seventeenth-century intellectual history, philosophy, theology and history of science.

Causality in Crisis?

Causality in Crisis?
Author: Vaughn R. McKim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1997
Genre: Social sciences
ISBN: 9780268008246

These essays critically reassess the widely accepted view that statistical methods of analysis can, and do, yield causal understanding of social phenomena. They emphasize the historical, philosophical and conceptual perspectives that underlie and inform current methodological controversies.

Causality

Causality
Author: Judea Pearl
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2009-09-14
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 052189560X

Causality offers the first comprehensive coverage of causal analysis in many sciences, including recent advances using graphical methods. Pearl presents a unified account of the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual and structural approaches to causation, and devises simple mathematical tools for analyzing the relationships between causal connections, statistical associations, actions and observations. The book will open the way for including causal analysis in the standard curriculum of statistics, artificial intelligence ...

The Book of Why

The Book of Why
Author: Judea Pearl
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0465097618

A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence "Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

Causal Inference

Causal Inference
Author: Miquel A. Hernan
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2019-07-07
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9781420076165

The application of causal inference methods is growing exponentially in fields that deal with observational data. Written by pioneers in the field, this practical book presents an authoritative yet accessible overview of the methods and applications of causal inference. With a wide range of detailed, worked examples using real epidemiologic data as well as software for replicating the analyses, the text provides a thorough introduction to the basics of the theory for non-time-varying treatments and the generalization to complex longitudinal data.

Machine Learning and Causality: The Impact of Financial Crises on Growth

Machine Learning and Causality: The Impact of Financial Crises on Growth
Author: Mr.Andrew J Tiffin
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1513519514

Machine learning tools are well known for their success in prediction. But prediction is not causation, and causal discovery is at the core of most questions concerning economic policy. Recently, however, the literature has focused more on issues of causality. This paper gently introduces some leading work in this area, using a concrete example—assessing the impact of a hypothetical banking crisis on a country’s growth. By enabling consideration of a rich set of potential nonlinearities, and by allowing individually-tailored policy assessments, machine learning can provide an invaluable complement to the skill set of economists within the Fund and beyond.

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
Author: Stephen M. Barr
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2003-02-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0268158053

A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the “war between science and religion.” In his accessible and eminently readable new book, Stephen M. Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism. Scientific materialism grew out of scientific discoveries made from the time of Copernicus up to the beginning of the twentieth century. These discoveries led many thoughtful people to the conclusion that the universe has no cause or purpose, that the human race is an accidental by-product of blind material forces, and that the ultimate reality is matter itself. Barr contends that the revolutionary discoveries of the twentieth century run counter to this line of thought. He uses five of these discoveries—the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Gödel’s Theorem in mathematics, and quantum theory—to cast serious doubt on the materialist’s view of the world and to give greater credence to Judeo-Christian claims about God and the universe. Written in clear language, Barr’s rigorous and fair text explains modern physics to general readers without oversimplification. Using the insights of modern physics, he reveals that modern scientific discoveries and religious faith are deeply consonant. Anyone with an interest in science and religion will find Modern Physics and Ancient Faith invaluable.

Causation in International Relations

Causation in International Relations
Author: Milja Kurki
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2008-04-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139470760

World political processes, such as wars and globalisation, are engendered by complex sets of causes and conditions. Although the idea of causation is fundamental to the field of International Relations, what the concept of cause means or entails has remained an unresolved and contested matter. In recent decades ferocious debates have surrounded the idea of causal analysis, some scholars even questioning the legitimacy of applying the notion of cause in the study of International Relations. This book suggests that underlying the debates on causation in the field of International Relations is a set of problematic assumptions (deterministic, mechanistic and empiricist) and that we should reclaim causal analysis from the dominant discourse of causation. Milja Kurki argues that reinterpreting the meaning, aims and methods of social scientific causal analysis opens up multi-causal and methodologically pluralist avenues for future International Relations scholarship.