The Law of Coincidence of Causes means thousands of minute causes fitted together and co-ordinated to produce that movement… that effect. There cannot be a singular cause for any effect. There has to be more than one cause to get the desired effect.
Allow me to take the example of Gravity. This example is being taken because the ‘Theory of Gravity’ of Sir Isaac Newton is very famous – also known as Newton’s law of universal gravitation. We have been taught to believe in this. As the legend goes, a young Isaac Newton was sitting beneath an apple tree contemplating the mysterious universe when suddenly an apple hit him on the head at which point, he realized that the same force was causing the apple to fall. We were not taught to criticize this, because it is a scientific fact!!! I wish to explain as to why an apple falls by using the Law of Coincidence of Causes. Probably then you will understand what I mean.
Why does an apple fall when it is ripe?
Is it brought down by the force of gravity?
Is it because its stalk withers?
Is it because it is dried by the sun?
Is it because it grew too heavy?
Is it because the wind shakes it grew too heavy?
Is it because the wind shakes it?
Or is it because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause. They only make up the combination of conditions under every living process of organic nature fulfills itself.
If you were to ask a botanist – he says that the people falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is just as right and just as wrong as the child who stands under the tree and says that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall.
Thus, there is no single cause called ‘gravity’ which made the apple fall. Every action that seems an act of free will is in the historical sense not free at all but bound up with the whole course of history & preordained from all eternity.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional.
What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
