The book of why: the new science of cause and effect

Description

"Everyone has heard the claim, "Correlation does not imply causation." What might sound like a reasonable dictum metastasized in the twentieth century into one of science's biggest obstacles, as a legion of researchers became unwilling to make the claim that one thing could cause another. Even two decades ago, asking a statistician a question like "Was it the aspirin that stopped my headache?" would have been like asking if he believed in voodoo, or at best a topic for conversation at a cocktail party rather than a legitimate target of scientific inquiry. Scientists were allowed to posit only that the probability that one thing was associated with another. This all changed with Judea Pearl, whose work on causality was not just a victory for common sense, but a revolution in the study of the world";"Correlation is not causation"--This was one of the standards of scientific belief for a century. Now Pearl and his colleagues establish causality--the study of cause and effect--on a firm scientific basis. Causality doesn't just enable us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It is not just a victory for common sense, but a revolution in the study of the world.