What is the origin of the idea of unseen causes ?

Back in the day, in our prehistoric past, we got the idea that behind appearances were unseen forces making things happen, rather than simply experiencing things happening.

Or did we ?

if so, when did that happen and what were the circumstances ?

I include all sorts of causes from camouflaged predators rustling the bushes, to gods and spirits, to gravity and magnetism etc.

Well look at us today. We’ve still got gravity, magnetism, and unseen forces. Pretty sure we’re still prehistoric. Things are gonna start looking pretty nice when we get into the historic era.

What I’m saying is that moment you’re looking for ain’t happened yet.

It is simple to observe that we can apply force to make things happen. It’s no great leap to assume there must be a force behind everything that happens.

Mans natural curiosity. So pretty much from the get-go.

Not sure what you’re asking. If you include things like gravity, unseen causes/forces are pretty ubiquitous. It’s hard to imagine not having any idea about them.

I think that is an enormous and fundamental leap. Maybe.

Why? Again, we see that we can make things move. Why wouldn’t a thinking human assume there was a force behind other things that move. We probably missed some subtleties such as gravity, with not many people thinking beyond the idea that things fall downward, but we will tend to assume that something makes rain happen, that something drives the sun across the sky. It’s human to want explanations, the smallest child will constantly ask “why?”. When we don’t know the answer an unseen force is the default answer. Humans may not have understood the concept of ‘force’ as we do now, it’s easier to imagine the sun is a living being as we are, but we still see that being driving the sun across the sky just as we move ourselves across the land.

Hard question to formulate. Basically I’m assuming that in the distant past whatever organism we evolved from had a very basic perception and instinctive reaction, and made no models of why things happened. They just happened.

That far back, my question would be one of how much conscious reflection an animal engages in when looking at it’s environment - say a zebra sees a rustling in the bushes, does it think “lion!”, or is it’s desire to run away purely instinctive with no imagination involved. Just that evolution has given it an instinct to run when the grass rustles, and it’s always a total surprise when the lion jumps out, because the grass and the lion are not causally linked in it’s mind - because it doesn’t really have a mind.
But we DO have imaginations that allow us to put rustling grass and lion together - so when did that sort of capability arise ?
Next comes animism, where things happen due to spirits, and now we’re in scientific era in which things happen due to unseen forces forces like gravity and wotnot.

Are you asking what point of the development of consciousness did we attribute forces as causes? Essentially that’s understanding cause and effect. It’s hard to say if mouse taught to bump a lever to get some food understands the cause and effect or is simply conditioned. But we can see signs of intelligence in birds that can learn to use tools without conditioning. It seems to be tied to our ability to learn through abstraction. Some animals besides humans show signs of that, our ancient ancestors probably developed that before we could call them human.

Because it’s hard to believe in something that is not directly observable, much less formulate a belief in it. If nobody had ever explained the concept of magnets to you, and you found something hovering in the air, it’s unlikely that you would think that some natural physical force must be at work. You’d think, “magic!”

Sure, a magical force though. You can observe the consistent behavior of magnets, even though you don’t know how it works doesn’t mean you just shrug your shoulders and move on. People may have thought that if you dropped something from your hand it would fall to the ground from a lack of something holding it up and miss the concept of a force pulling it down, but with magnets there’s obviously something, even something magical, that makes things move.

Well, consider how long it took us to figure out that things don’t fall down “just because.”

I agree with other posters that the idea of unseen causes would have appeared as soon as humans evolved the cognitive ability to think in terms of causes at all. Why are some days cloudy and others sunny? Why do the sun, moon and stars move in predictable ways? Etc.

Since the answer to this must remain speculative, let’s move this to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator