This text introduces the major philosophical debates surrounding the concepts of causation and explanation. In particular, it explores the connections between the two concepts and the role of causation in explanation. What is the nature of causation? Is it a relation between events? Or is it a process? Is it an observable relation? Explanation has typically been thought of as a kind of argument but do they have to be so? If not, then what are they? By centering the discussion around the issues and controvasies, this text addresses these, and many other questions, beginning with Hume's reductive account of causation and Humean and non-Humean accounts, examining the Carnap-Hempel empiricist approach, the laws of nature, the unification arguments of Friedman and Kitcher and the works of their critics.