Correlation Without Causation

Correlation without causation is a term used in science to determine that ideas such as, someone’s eating habits being directly correlated with their shirt size. This idea states that the cause of someone wearing a larger shirt is due to how much they eat, however this does not consider other factors that affect one’s body size, such as one’s metabolism. Historians when conducting research will also consider what the causes of events are, and in the process an historian may run into the problem of deciding what correlations are relevant. Many run into the problem of using information that is to outdated to have relevancy, or they exempt vital information by finding a “point of no return.” Historians must deal with these problems, but how?

Gaddis explains that, “you could continue this process (the process of working backward) all the way back to the moment hundreds of millions of years earlier, when the first Japanese islands rose up”. Gaddis goes on to say that the rise of the Japanese islands does not contain much relevancy to why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. This problem with relevancy stumps many historians when they are trying to decide what information is relevant to the research at hand. The, “principle of diminishing relevance” is the only solution historians have found to mitigate and contain the relevancy of information used when examining causation. This principle allows historians to step back and realize that the birth of a nation, as in this case, may not be relevant in dealing with what that nation does millions of years later. As Gaddis explains, one can say that because Japan was born that this eventually lead to them bombing Pearl Harbor. However, Japan’s birth does not affect why they bombed Pearl Harbor; it only establishes that Japan was born. When finding causation in this manner Historians tend to use the less relevant options to explain an instance, and their ideas get muddled in the inconsistencies of invalid

This point is “a moment at which an equilibrium that once existed ceased to do so.” When an historian sets a point of no return, he is discrediting everything before that event. As Gaddis Explains, “the Scottish service book would not have been introduced had there not been a protestant reformation and all that flowed from it.” In this Gaddis is exemplifying that to create a point of no return is to exempt all previous information. In comparison, the “principle of diminishing relevance” allows for the inclusion of all aspects in history and determines relevancy on a situational basis instead of deducing it down to one point in time. In using a situation basis to determine relevancy, all aspects are accounted for and a precise conclusion can form; this allows for a true cause to be deduced. Additionally, using a point of no return can lead to a precise conclusion. However I do not believe it can be a complete conclusion, for it can leave out important relevant information. Therefore, the only way to mitigate the pitfalls of finding causation is to use the “Principle of diminishing relevance” for it allows the historian to examine all aspects of a