Causation is different from correlation. The former signifies a clear, logical causality. For example, heating water eventually makes it boiled. Putting ice cubes into a glass of water makes it cold. These are an apparent, straightforward causality.
Describing a complex phenomenon into a series of causations is one of the fundamental keys for scientific reductionism – the basis for tremendous progress in science and technology.
When two things take place, and yet we can’t see a clear, logical relationship, which is a correlation. In a given community, for example, as the ice cream consumption increases, the crime rate changes as well. Even if it shows a strong correlation, we can’t call this causation – not yet, unless and until we see a clear, logical causality.
If we don’t see any causality, then this means that we can’t make any prediction. If we see A causes B, only by knowing this, we could predict that A would cause B again, while ignoring its historicity and irreversibility.
Life, however, is not such a reductionistic environment. It is not random, but not predictable, either. We call it deterministic chaos. One of the typical examples is a butterfly effect. We can also observe many cases in nature such as weather, climate, even traffic jam.
When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.
Edward Lorenz
In human history, various superstitions are due to such causation/correlation confusion. This confusion is everywhere even in modern days among pseudoscientific, and pseudo-religious explanations. It is another version of category error.
Life is in chaos theory, which means that it is neither random nor causal in totality. It could be predictable but not in the realm of reductionistic causality.
Life is unpredictable not because of its randomness but its intrinsic, irreversible nature. Only in this realization, we can contemplate on the true meaning of divine interventions, even the existence of angels, not superstitiously, but authentically.
Tom’s Blog 