Causation sounds like one of those super obscure philosophical terms. However, it refers to the simple idea that events in the real world cause other events. It’s a very primitive and intuitive notion, on par with our notions of space and time. And just as it turns out that our simple ideas about space and time belie a much more complicated reality, so it is that a closer look at the notion of causation leads to some puzzling and even troubling questions.

“Causation: A Very Short Introduction” aims to take the reader on a tour of some of the most interesting ideas about causation that have cropped up over the history of philosophy. It is a short book, but it is by no means a quick read. As it often happens when trying to untangle apparently uniform threads a lot of exactitude and precision need to be applied, which in turn requires a high level of mental dexterity and patience. This book is not an easy read, and I would only recommend it to readers who appreciate tightly argued philosophical ideas and are willing to invest the time and effort required for their full comprehension.

The book presents several main ideas and schools of thought that have been built in order to answer the question of what exactly we mean by causation. The authors show that most of those ideas, even though they seem very counterintuitive on the surface, have many attractive features that make them hard to dismiss out hand, or at all. However, the book argues that no single school of though so far has managed to capture all of our intuitive ideas about causation.

Personally, as a theoretical Physicist, I would have liked it if this book covered the “Physicalist” view of causation (or “causality” as we like to call it) in more depth. I think that this book’s ideas about physical reductionism are a bit too glib and don’t quite capture the full complexity of this approach.

Worrying about causation is not just an exercise in navel gazing. Finding and understanding causal connection deeply affects science, law, and medicine, to name just a few examples through which we are affected on a daily basis. If you would like to take a probing tour of what causation may mean in and of itself, then this short book is a good place to start. But be fully prepared to grease your intellectual elbows, as reading this small tome can be quite a mental exercise.