Kant's anticipation of the treatment of the law of casuality as methodological rule

Abstract

In contemporary methodology of science the problem of causality is of central interest, both in natural and in historical-social science. To treat the concept of causality solely as a metodological rule of investigation (K, Popper) implied the abandonment of the metaphysical principle of causality which dominated in science, earlier and in the last century. Although Popper’s thesis has been renounced, comprehension of causality as methodological principle has remained up to date the symbol of the turning point in the understanding of science, and the starting point of lilts modernization. Kant’s treatment of the problem of causality has contributed to the introduction of the law of causality as a methodological rule, because it contained each of the three basic aspects: (1) the investigator never refrains from the search for the universal law; (2) lie always seeks to explain in causal terms the event he is describing; (3) the investigator never abandons ttie search for a coherent theoretical system. The first requisite found expression in Kant’s acceptance of the transcendental application of cause, as oposed to the metaphysical, which meant that investigation was not aimed at the discovery of the existence of the law of causality in events, since the cause is a notion by aid of which something can be perceived as an object. Therefore the category of cause is only an »aprioristic condition of linking the diversity of an entity in the determination of temporal relations« and as such it does not make possible either cognition or the object itself. This category, therefore, expresses the effort to reach the law of causality which is by itself, without the definition of the place of cause in the organisation of scientific experience, just an empty word. The second aspete of causality as methodological rule was manifest in Kant’s of the need of a ride which would mark the application of the category of cause in scientific experience. The rule, as described in his second analogy of experience, points to the fact that, because of the notion of causality, we are forced to regard events in temporal sequence, in which what precedes is the cause of that which follows, regardless of whether we are dealing with simultaneity or successivity of time. However, Kant tended to regard the relation of cause and effect too strictly, following in this respect Hume's and Leibnitz’ notion of logical necessity, which was in turn due to the strictly causal view then prevalent in science. But in spite of this exception, Kant succeeded to weaken the deterministic tendency by placing the strictly necessary relations of cause and effect within certain limits. The mere treatment of causality as a rule imposed such limits, because no rule could imply a strict necessity - every rule can be broken.