Although we like to imagine that science should in the end offer physical causes for phenomena, there is nothing to tell us when those causes should be sufficient, and when we must seek causes of causes… The endless regression of causality that todays forces us into the near-metaphysics of string theory, M-theory and the multiverse was already foreseen by Boyle when he complained to Hobbes that ‘Whatever true cause I told you, you would not then acquiesce to its truth, but would ask me further what was then the cause of this cause, whence it would go on to infinity…’ For Boyle curiousity about causes really did threaten to become a glass bead game… Philip Ball Curiousity 2012
What is at stake here is that Boyle thinks that events, effects may not have a uniquely attributable cause. The argument between Hobbes and Boyle remains central… like any constructivist i think Boyle is probably correct … And yet it’s clear that far to many still actively desire that Hobbes is correct…
