Why (at Least Some) Processes Matter

Abstract

As is well known, the philosophical debate on processes and mechanisms, as key concepts to grasp causal relations, has undergone several shifts over the past four decades or so. Moving from processes to mechanisms, and back again, philosophers of science have explored various disciplinary fields, searching for convincing and well-justified theoretical tools to, on the one hand, address causation, and, on the one hand, make sense of the actual use of causal concepts into scientific practice. While claiming that the notions of causal process and mechanism are compatible, the contribution argues for the relevance of the former for epistemological purposes. To support such a view, a specific example from the biomedical sciences is analyzed: cancers of unknown primary origin. Drawing on current scientific research on this distinctive class of pathologies, and to some of the open questions it is addressing, it is argued that a processual approach is particularly well suited to explaining the search for explanations of the origin, trajectories and dynamics of such oncological occurrences.