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de Steensplinter — Geology and a cosmology of the obvious

4.5 groundwork

• bivalve Mollusc.
The small dark colored valve near the top is one of the two valves of the juvenile stage of this animal; when it rested the two juvenile valves would close, their rims touching. They are now far apart, separated by shell layers formed during the episodic growth of the animal, each new layer formed by the living mantle on the inside of the valve and extending further outward.
(photograph Matthys Heins)

note
14 K.R. Popper, `The logic of scientific discovery',
Basic, New York, 1961.

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contents

(website version 2.30 - august 2007)

groundwork [continued]

     1. preview
     2. geology, a key to the past
     3. some evidence
     4. formation of a bivalve shell
     5. causality
     6. inorganic processes

causality

In all this I have not used the word causality, nor did I need it.
For a causal interpretation, I shall try to translate all this into the language of physical causality:
• Meteorological conditions caused the appearance of a situation
favourable for the settlement of this mollusk species. Then there were conditions that caused some specimens to migrate from elsewhere to this new biotope.
• Other conditions caused the destruction of this thriving community,
conditions that caused the transportation of the debris, conditions causing the material to settle to form a sediment, conditions causing the lithification and preservation, and so forth.
• And then there is the choice of the observer to become a geologist.
Because of this and because of his being there, there is an observer capable of understanding what he sees. As to his being there to observe, he may have wished to go to this place, but he may also have been sent.
Ultimately all this goes back to all sorts of previous causes, down to the primary cause of the `Big Bang'.

Clearly this introduction of the principle of `physical causality' does not add anything to the discussion.
Popper¹⁴ considers `physical causality' to be metaphysical. He does not use the words `cause' and `effect'.
I too will evade the word `causality' in the sense of physical causality.
This, as will be shown, does not exclude mind-to-matter causality.

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