Talk:Causality

Preserving initial attempt
When I encountered it, the article contained this text, which had multiple violations of our basic rules. It's preserved here in the hopes of finding something with which to rebuild the article. 04:16: Mon 18 Mar 2013

Causality is the relationship between cause and effect, and that concept that a cause must precede an effect in relative linear time. Classically, a causal nexus is a generic term for that set of factors (or causes) that influenced an end effect.

When the Tenth Doctor says that time is "more like a big ball of wibbley-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff," he specifies that this is from a "non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint." (TV: Blink)

Although our genius Time Lord appreciates that time is not necessarily bound in a linear flow, we know from example that his experience of time is linear (and therefore causal), if strictly relative to his own subjective viewpoint. The strongest evidence for this is when the Doctor's TARDIS, in the body of Idris, who earlier stated that she exists across all time and space, states that she has archived 30 different versions of the TARDIS control room, the Eleventh Doctor protests that he's only changed it twelve times and "you can't archive things that hasn't happened yet!" The TARDIS replies that he can't, confirming that the Doctor must experience linear time even if she doesn't. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)

The Eighth Doctor referenced causality while describing anti-time, effectively equating causality with time itself. "Anti-time: as intractable and destructive a force to causality as antimatter is to space."

The Tenth Doctor frets about staying relative in the causal nexus in TV: The End of Time.

When asked to help save her younger self, Older Amy says, "You’re asking me to defy destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself?” (TV: The Girl Who Waited)

The Eleventh Doctor says that they "have to stick to the established chain of events, one mistake and the whole timeline could collapse". When he resolves the issue, he says that "the localised time field is no longer about to implode and rip a hole in all causality." (TV: Time) He also chastises Amy Pond for reading ahead in "Melody Malone", as reading ahead forces them to ensure that what they learned comes to pass. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) On several occasions he ensures that he and his companions complete the actions to which their past selves have already reacted. (TV: The Lodger, The Big Bang, Space / Time)

BTS

In physics in the real world, causality is the generic relationship between causes and effects, and is considered a fundamental concept of all natural sciences. In relativity theory, for every given event there is a set of things that influence the event and a set of things that are influenced by the event. In the real world, a signal is said to violate causality if, to any possible observer, it appears to be travelling faster than light, or in other words, backwards in time.

The real world concept of the closed timelike curve describes certain sets of solutions to the equations of General Relativity where causality would break down, allowing event to be simultaneous with cause.


 * SO what we need to improve this article are any direct uses of the precise word causality. All I can see here is one direct reference: that from, I assume, Zagreus.  What other mentions of causality do we have in DWU fiction?  04:23: Mon 18 Mar 2013


 * Actually, I believe that's from AUDIO: Neverland. I was actually editing the page to make it more in-universe when I found out, after clicking publish, that it was locked. I have a copy of the revised text on my computer if you ever want it. --SOTO ☎ 04:28, March 18, 2013 (UTC)
 * So did you wholly revise it? Go ahead and shoot your copy of the page here. Think of this as a writing workshop.  04:34: Mon 18 Mar 2013
 * I didn't do research or anything, but I fixed up wording and got rid of obviously unrelated info:
 * --SOTO ☎ 04:48, March 18, 2013 (UTC)

Causality was the relationship between cause and effect, and the concept that a cause must precede an effect in relative linear time.

The Tenth Doctor once described time as, from a "non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint," "more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey stuff," rather than "a strict progression of cause to effect." (TV: Blink)

Although he was aware of time not always being bound in a linear flow, his experience of time must have been mostly linear (and therefore causal), if strictly relative to his own subjective viewpoint. For example, when the Doctor's TARDIS, in the body of Idris, who existed across all of time and space, stated that she has archived 30 different versions of the TARDIS control room archived, the Eleventh Doctor protested, saying that he'd only changed it twelve times and that "you can't archive things that hasn't happened yet!" The TARDIS replied that he can't, confirming that the Doctor must have experienced linear time, when she didn't. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)

The Eighth Doctor referenced causality while describing Anti-Time, effectively equating causality with time itself: "Anti-time: as intractable and destructive a force to causality as antimatter is to space." (AUDIO: Neverland)

When asked to help save her younger self, older Amy Pond said, "You’re asking me to defy destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself?" (TV: The Girl Who Waited) After resolving an issue that he claimed would make "the whole timeline collapse," the Eleventh Doctor jokingly stated that "the localised time field is no longer about to implode and rip a hole in all causality." (TV: Time) He also chastised Amy Pond for reading ahead in Melody Malone, as reading ahead forced them to ensure that what they learned would come to pass. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan) On several occasions, he ensured that he and his companions complete the actions to which their past selves had already reacted. (TV: The Lodger, The Big Bang, Space / Time)
 * Far from perfect, and I'm sure that a lot of it's still speculative, but it's certainly improved. I think it would work best if anyone just edit the above text and write what they changed down here, rather than reposting the text many, many times over.
 * Also, I might as well note that this may be able to clear up a recent discussion about splitting up an actual paradox (ie. contradicts itself) and a non-linear event. At least "causality" is a term that can be verified in-universe, unlike "non-linear event." --SOTO ☎ 04:48, March 18, 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if an administrator can do this, but can we please make this a real page available for editing? It's in-universe, so just because the first edit of this page wasn't good doesn't mean we can't make the page. Steed ☎  02:54, May 10, 2014 (UTC)