Or in a nutshell... yes, and yes.

From Wikipedia: Though cause and effect are typically related to events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; characterizing the causal relationship can be the subject of much debate. According to Sowa (2000), up until the twentieth century, 3 assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality: 1. "Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect. 2. "Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect. 3. "Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact." (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000) However, according to Sowa (2000), "relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience."