Abstract

The paper attempts to reconcile two very different approaches to the concept of causation. In the original form, it is the opposition found in Laplace between his doctrine of constant and variable causes on the one hand and his mechanistic determinism on the other. This tension was described clearly only by Maxwell who stressed the contrast between the statistical and the dynamical method (calling the latter also the historical or strictly kinetic method). A similar dichotomy surfaces in the work of Wesley Salmon who distinguished statistical from aleatory causation. Acknowledging that we seem to have conflicting intuitions about causality and explanation, I argue that assigning probabilistic laws a fundamental role in scientific explanation does not conflict with the assumption of Laplacian determinism. This is due to the fact that in most systems of interest, we confront a complex interaction of multiple causal factors and an extreme sensitivity to small variations of initial conditions.