Eli5: In science, can you establish causation without knowing the causal mechanism?

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Pretty much the title

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes. In fact, much of science consists in searching the causal mechanism for causations that were already established. We typically observe that some phenomenon causes or is caused by another before figuring out how.

Sometimes we don’t even know how things work before we put them to use! Vaccines are an example, as people understood that limited exposure to some diseases could provide immunity centuries before they understood *how*.

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