The Pre-Existent Effect (Satkāryavāda)

Does making something bring a wholly new thing into being, or only unfold what was already latent in its cause? Sāṃkhya and Vedānta answer the latter: the effect pre-exists in the cause, as the pot is already implicit in the clay and the oil already in the seed; 'production' is just its becoming manifest. Their opponents, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika realists, hold the opposite — that the effect is a genuinely new arising not present beforehand. This dry-sounding dispute is foundational: it underlies how each school explains causation, the world's origin, and the relation of the world to its ultimate ground.