Physical Causation

This book, published in 2000, is a clear account of causation based firmly in contemporary science.

Dowe discusses in a systematic way, a positive account of causation: the conserved quantities account of causal processes which he has been developing over the last ten years.

The book describes causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities: a causal process is the worldline of an object which possesses a conserved quantity, and a causal interaction involves the exchange of conserved quantities.

Further, things that are properly called cause and effect are appropriately connected by a set of causal processes and interactions.

The distinction between cause and effect is explained in terms of a version of the fork theory: the direction of a certain kind of ordered pattern of events in the world.

This particular version has the virtue that it allows for the possibility of backwards causation, and therefore time travel.