causation

From cause +‎ -ation.

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

causation (countable and uncountable, plural causations)

1. The act of causing.
2. The act or agency by which an effect is produced.
   • 1837, William Whewell, “Earliest Stages of Optics”, in History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Times. […], volume I, London: John W[illiam] Parker, […]; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: J. and J. J. Deighton, OCLC 1112872753, book II (History of the Physical Sciences in Ancient Greece), page 100:

     Aristotle's views led him to try to describe the kind of causation by which vision is produced, instead of the laws by which it is exercised; and the attempt consisted, as in other subjects, of indistinct principles, and ill-combined facts.

3. Cause and effect, considered as a system.

   Synonym: causality

• causational

• ætiology, aetiology, etiology

• causation in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• causation in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913