The Causal Family: The Place of Causality in Science

This paper introduces the family of causal notions employed in fundamental science and analyses some of the conceptual relations between them. I claim that the notions of locality, stability, conservation laws, determinism and extremum principles chart the complex web of causal connections that structure our world. I explore three examples central to contemporary science: the relation between stability and determinism, the relation between locality and determinism and the relation between stability and extremum principles. These examples suggest a pluralistic picture of causation and a new agenda for the philosophy of causation.