Let me quote John Wheeler, “Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move”. It is incorrect to say that either 'causes' the other. Cause and effect only provides a circular argument.
Let me take another example, the old double slit experiment. The observer, by how they set up the detectors, determine what the results are going to be, particle or wave. Now here is the trillion dollar (inflation you know) question, does the observer 'cause' the results? This becomes even more interesting when time and nonlocality come into play. Future and/or past events can change the results, nullifying and changing the 'cause and effect' of the event. These paradoxes falsify 'cause and effect'.
In any case Aristotles (philosophical/religious) causes and effects;
The material cause is the physical matter, the mass of "raw material" of which something is "made" (of which it consists).
The formal cause tells us what, by analogy to the plans of an artisan, a thing is intended and planned to be.
The efficient cause is that external entity from which the change or the ending of the change first starts.
The final cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists, or is done - including both purposeful and instrumental actions. The final cause, or telos, is the purpose, or end, that something is supposed to serve.
Can obviously be seen as unscientific rationals unsupported by evidence. That is after all what Philosophy and Religion is.
"...This is one of the intrinsic errors of scientism, as it tries to pretend it can get along without final causes, even while habitually slipping them in the back door. For the truth is, one cannot even think coherently in the absence of final causation. ... [....]
"Metaphysics deals with ultimate causes "from above," i.e., the vertical, as opposed to the purely horizontal causes explored by science. Thus, one way to eliminate final cause is to simply pretend that the vertical does not exist, even though, again, the very conduct of science is impossible in the absence of verticality, no matter how attenuated. The moment a scientist has said "truth," he has said "vertical," and therefore finality, absolute, and God. For the truth of something is its final cause.
"What is the truth of man?
"Note that the materialist does not really eliminate final cause.
"Rather, he simply affirms that the final cause is the material or efficient cause, i.e., random matter and energy.
"That being the case, he is promulgating the metaphysical absurdity of "absolute relativism," or --------- the impossible idea that the ultimate meaning of existence is ultimate meaninglessness.
Wheeler is describing just such a causal relationship between space/time and energy/momentum - in essence suggesting that it doesn't matter which is labeled "cause" or which is labeled "effect."
But unless he ventured into geometric physics in the same discussion, his remarks would be construed under a directional arrow of time (as compared to volumetric time) - meaning it is up to the observer/physicist to select which is cause and which is effect for his particular investigation.
Hmmmm... that word "tells" does not sound very scientifically rigorous to me. Is Wheeler anthropomorphizing matter and spacetime here? There's no "telling" in Newtonian mechanics; there are only causes and effects.
Why do you say "Cause and effect only provides a circular argument?" Please explain.
You wrote:
Now here is the trillion dollar (inflation you know) question, does the observer 'cause' the results? This becomes even more interesting when time and nonlocality come into play. Future and/or past events can change the results, nullifying and changing the 'cause and effect' of the event. These paradoxes falsify 'cause and effect'.Newtonian cause and effect "breaks down" at the quantum level. His theory demands all causes be local. But we know that, in the quantum world, there are nonlocal causes as well.
My understanding is that Newtonian cause and effect (generally involving the first three Aristotelian causes, with final cause prohibited) operates in the "mesoworld," the world of ordinary 4D spacetime as humans normally experience it. Newton's laws turn out to be something like 99.997... "accurate" in describing and predicting phenomena in the band of the mesoworld. Not perfect, but pretty durned good! And of course, Newton's science is premised in physical causation.
There is also the metaworld "above" the mesoworld, described by Einsteinian physics; and the microworld "below," the quantum world. It seems that Newtonian physics is eclipsed in both these worlds.
So to your question, "does the observer 'cause' the results" in the double-slit experiment by choosing what he wants to observe — i.e., particle or wave? Certainly he can determine (cause) which he "sees" if he knows the proper experimental set up (i.e., the detectors). But did he "cause" the particle or wave? No, I don't think so. They were already there, as complementary descriptions of this mysterious thing called "matter." The observer is just bringing one of the descriptions into focus, as it were: He knows he can't "see" both at once, so he has to choose. But it seems to me nothing new is created here.
I don't see Aristotle's four causes as essentially "religious." Rather they are epistemic and logical.
Elsewhere you've written that Aristotle has been "discredited." By whom? You???
That fact is, if anything, he's getting more attention from physicists and mathematicians working on theoretical biology issues these days.... People who have come to realize that they need to speak of final cause.