causality
(kɔːˈzælɪtɪ)
[mod. f. on L. type *causālitās, f. causāl-is causal + -ity.]
1. Causal quality, character, efficiency, or agency; fact or state of being or acting as a cause.
| 1603 Sir C. Heydon Jud. Astrol. ii. 69 When they are called signes, their causalitie is not excluded. 1649 Jer. Taylor Life Christ ii. x. vii. ¶6 Faith is the beginning grace, and hath influence and causality in the production of the other. 1678 Cudworth Intell. Syst. 750 A Power or Causality, whereby that which was Not before, was afterwards Made to Be. 1748 Hartley Observ. Man ii. i. ¶16. 67 To ascribe a real Causality to Free-will. 1875 Grindon Life ii. 14 Nature has no independent activity, no causality of its own. |
2. The operation or relation of cause and effect; ‘the law of mind which makes it necessary to recognise power adequate to account for every occurrence’ (Fleming's Vocab. Philos. 1887).
| 1642 O. Sedgwicke England's Preserv. 10 By way of order only, and not by causality. 1817 Coleridge Biog. Lit. 62 The law of causality holds only between homogeneous things. 1836–7 Sir W. Hamilton Metaph. xxxix (1859) II. 376 The nature and genealogy of the notion of Causality. 1860 Emerson Cond. Life ii. (1861) 34 A belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being..characterizes all valuable minds. 1870 Bowen Logic x. 333 The necessary laws of Causality and Time. |
3. Phrenol. The mental faculty of tracing effects to causes.
| 1874 Blackie Self-Cult. 6 The quality of mind, which..phrenologists call causality. |
¶ 4. An excuse. (? Not Eng.)
| 1656 Blount Glossogr., Causality, Causation, an excuse, essoyning or pretence. |