Within a few months of birth, babies have an extensive history of such sensory-motor interactions that provide them with a good idea of what it is to manipulate the world, not just observing it but constantly intervening to make things happen in it. Much later, when, as children, they have acquired language, they can use the word “cause,” but its meaning still depends on the earlier preverbal experience of perceiving a situation, acting, and perceiving the results of the action. Much later still, people can acquire a richer understanding of causality by education in statistical inference, but that still depends on an intuitive notion of causality as intervention that began with sensory-motor experience.