Causality in Early Modern Philosophy

At the beginning of the Modern Age, two important changes occurred in relation to the understanding of causality: Aristotle's Four Causes were reduced to only the efficient cause, and the concept of causality was no longer considered ontological but instead considered epistemological. While the cause was originally considered to be explanatory of beings and their movements, causality is now defined as the relation between two events whose reality and epistemological validity must be justified. In order to tell part of that story, this book studies eight authors from a historical viewpoint. These authors include Suárez, Bacon, Boyle, Hobbes, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Additionally, the contributions gathered herein are in keeping with the three realms of inquiry that correspond to Descartes theory of causality: the interaction between bodies, the interaction between body and soul, and the causal relationship between God and finite substances.