Pavlov
He was a biologist who did research to the ability in animals to connect cause and effect. For instance, he had testdog in his laboratory. the dog's saliva glands were wired to measurement equipment so that they could tell when he started to produce that. At first the dog only reacted when there was food in sight or smell. Then Pavlov started ringing a bell a few minutes before the food was brought in. After some time the dog already started producing saliva when it was only the bell and no food followed. Even if it was not even dinner time.
So Pavlov concluded that the dog could be learned to associate the bell with the food. ^_^ The dog could learn to draw conclusions from experience. It probably thought that the food was the effect of the bell.
Humans also do that. When you see a fire you know it's hot, since you probably burned yourself on it when you were little. But with humans it's not just our own experience, we have language and can teach eachother things. Even sayings like "where there's smoke, there's fire" are ways to pass on information that's important and born out of experience of those before us.
Humans aren't the only ones by the way. Apes teach eachother things, even if they have never experienced it themselves. And even birds share information (for example in England, how to open milk bottles *grins*)
Anyway, I'm going way too far here! Just ignore me
