Causal thinking

Causal thinking is the result of the causal principle (or causality) which according to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant is defined as follows:

Although the belief in causality determines essentially the development of humanity, it suffers a number of drawbacks:

Instead of using the term causality physics uses the following paraphrase:

This change in the way of speaking in science does not affect causal thinking particularly because the scientific approach and the scientific rules and laws remained unchanged. The scientific approach is built on the assumption that any development may be represented by an alternating sequence of causes and effects, where the last effect is the cause of the next effect.

Causal thinking for solving problems proceeds in three steps:

Causal thinking follows the line given by a sequence of cause-effects relations and therefore causal thinking is described by Binder as thinking in points. Similarly, von Collani compares the prevailing causal thinking in science with logical thinking since it is based on a sequence, the logical relations if a then b.

Causal thinking is closely related to reductionism that tries to explain the whole by its parts through causal laws. In other words, causal thinking focus on the parts, or points as Binder calls them. Searching for the cause means to search for that part of a system whose maloperation had finally produced the observed event.

Causal thinking may have two results:

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