A cause is an event that produces a second event, known as an effect. And effect always occurs later in time than its cause.
One cause may have many effects and a single effect may have many causes. Further, the same effect have a different cause or causes under different circumstances.
Causes may be direct or indirect. A direct cause produces an effect immediately, without any intervening causes and effects, while and indirect cause exerts its ultimate effect through one or more intermediate cause-and-effect steps.
In the real world, causes and effects are often related in a complex web of interactions, which can make it difficult to determine what is really causing what. One of the principle goals of science is to correctly assign causes to effects.
When one event occurs after the other, they are said to be correlated. However, just because two events are correlated does not necessarily mean that one caused the other.
Isolating causes can be difficult. For example, consider the statement, “John dropped the plate which caused it to break on the floor.” What is the cause of the broken plate? The action of John opening his hand and releasing the plate? The force of gravity working on the plate, which pulled it to the floor? The hard surface of the floor? The brittle nature of the ceramic from which the plate was made? If any one of these were not true, then the plate would not have broken. So are they all causes?