Post Hoc Ergo Coffee Hoc

One of my favorite logical fallacies is the one called "post hoc ergo prompter hoc." Translated from the Latin, it means, "after this therefore because of this." The fallacy involves assuming that because something happens after another thing it was caused by it. For a ridiculous example, I might note that the phone rang just now, immediately after I launched FreeCell on my computer. Did FreeCell make my phone ring? If I'm committing that fallacy, then yes it did.
But let's be a bit more reasonable. Today in Kansas City, it's snowing. If my daughter calls me to say she's had a car wreck, I'll probably assume that the weather contributed to the wreck. In reality, though, just because she had the wreck after the snow started doesn't mean that the snow caused the wreck. She might have been hit by someone who ran a stoplight.
So along comes this brilliant person who seems to suggest that the philosophical upheaval we call the Enlightenment came about because of coffee. You introduce coffee into European society in the 17th century. The Enlightenment kicks in during the late 17th and 18th centuries. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the connection.
But what this theorist neglected to see was the great potato connection. Potatoes--which come originally from South America and not from either Idaho or Ireland--arrived in Europe around the same time as coffee, around 1700. And many historians and philosophers date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the same time. Coincidence? I think not!
Perhaps what both coffee- and potato-Enlightenment theorists neglect is the much larger current that these two agricultural products were a part of. When the New World opened up to Europe, an incredible amount of wealth began flowing from the Americas to the Old World. That wealth provided for education, leisure time, and a period of great philosophizing.
Nah, it must have been the coffee.