Nadler, Steven (ed.) - Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Preestablished Harmony

Questions about the nature of causal relations occupy a central position in early modern philosophy. The prominence of this topic in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought can, in large measure, be traced to a specific historical problem: the need to reconcile an emerging scientific view of the natural world -- mechanistic physics -- with traditional beliefs about the relation between God and his creation.