Aside: Questions of the meaning of words are always problematic. Why?
Two broad approaches - that there are 'connections' between things, and that there are not.
Can there be patterns in events, but nothing bringing those patterns about?
When you observe billiard balls colliding, what you see is a sequence of events, but not any actual 'push' or 'force'.
One tempting conclusion: causes are not observable.
David Hume's conclusion: 'cause' means something that can be observed - the concept of cause to be understood as making a remark about patterns among events.
VP