Examining the debate that began as modern science separated itself from natural philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries, this text explores the two dominant approaches to causation as a metaphysical problem and as a scientific problem. As philosophy and science turned from the ideas of Aristotle that dominated western thought throughout the renaissance, one of the most pressing intellectual problems was how to replace Aristotelian science with its doctrine of the four causes. The text looks at the historical discussion as a debate that surrounds certain themes and ideas, and combines classical discussions of causation with recent thinking on the topic.

A study of the debate that began as modern science separated itself from natural philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book explores the two dominant approaches to causation, as a metaphysical problem and as a scientific problem. Classical discussions of causation are also combined with recent thinking on the topic.