Causality

Abstract

A preface is one of the few ways there are of having the past over again. When you have finished writing you re-read the piece - "What is this fellow trying to say?" - and devise some sort of justification for it; but other people will not come to read this as to a rationalization - for them, persuaded by mere format, it will be an announcing of intentions, and it is possible for an author most edifyingly to keep all the promises tho preface makes to the reader. If I could be sure of what I had succeeded in saying I should almost certainly be as bold as anyone in making a programme out of a fait accompli. As it is I am appalled to find that, although I begin with assertion, quite polemical assertion, and manage to keep this up for a while, I end with a mere question. There is a reason for this; I began in my reading for this Thesis by trying to pin down the problem of causality, but I could not discover either what causality was, or what the problem about it was - unless it was to discover what causality was.