Very much so. If we could quantitatively characterize every little effect, we might be able to model complex systems accurately, but it isn't always possible (e

Very much so. If we could quantitatively characterize every little effect, we might be able to model complex systems accurately, but it isn't always possible (exceptions exist, like meteorological modeling). For the longest time in biology, the modeling approach has tended to be more qualitative than quantitative, though this is changing. Yes, identifying root-causes from the outcomes is a model inversion problem (here's the data, find the generating model), and model inversion problems tend to be ill-conditioned. In complex systems, there's so many possible combinations of causes that could have led to a single outcome that characterizing the entire set is difficult.