causality

n. 1. The philosophical belief that all events and states are the result of forces acting on previous events and states. Causality was once assumed to be a basic tenet of scientific inquiry, but this idea was called into question by quantum physics and psychology in the middle 1900s, and its place in the philosophy of science is now uncertain. 2. A tendency of the human mind to perceive events in a way so as to believe that all events and states are the result of forces acting on previous events and states.