If we observe a child learning to walk, or talk, or indeed mastering any task that needs to be mastered so that he will grow, we will notice that the path from unable to do it to complete familiarity involves, mostly, mimicking, trial and error, and practice, practice, practice.
We might not remember learning very basic childhood tasks as adults but we will experience the process when we try and master a new skill at any stage of our lives. Each action, as we learn, causes a particular effect which, as we experience success, motivates us to repeat the action so that our level of competence in the effect is bettered.
Whether it is driving, changing a baby’s nappy, playing a musical instrument, knitting, or the tricky business of ensuring an egg is soft-boiled, the process is always the same. Eventually, we reach a point where we are satisfied with our level of competence at whatever skill we wish to master.
Of course, if the skill is of particular importance to us, the nature of the human seems to be to continue to try and improve beyond the plateau of satisfaction that is the norm for most of the population. For example, a Formula One racing driver will want to drive a bit better than I do!
So, causation can be defined as a relationship between two events when the first event (the cause) gives rise to the second event (the effect).
For example, there is causation between a child getting up on the saddle of his bike, rolling forward with the assistance of a trusted adult, gaining enough belief in himself to balance, realising that the cause of the not-falling-sideways-effect is moving forward (i.e. internalising the principle of the gyroscope -think spinning top falling over when it stops) and eventually becoming competent in the art of cycling. There is a causation chain (some people call this a causation mechanism) between firstly getting up on the saddle and being able to cycle alone!
(Cause and effect will be further described in the following posts 3.1.2.1 and 3.1.2.2),
Just as an aside – I find it interesting that in the French language there is a verb causer which means talking using symbols which ultimately leads to an event happening. The reason that this is of interest to me is that I will be mentioning the importance of symbols in human communication in following Chapters.