Causation without causes

I just reread Bachelor's translation of MMK . It struck me that the argument against causation was that: A cause has no essence in addition to what it is, else it would not be the final cause. But it must have an essence if it is to be active for more than a moment. So everything is radically impermanent: and nothing exists long enough to be born and then cease. And so everything that is born and ceases is empty, it is not a final cause. Any conditioned entity is then a mere conventional designation, something which can be identified in a better way (and on forever) and so is always incorrectly identified. ---------- But I was reading about Sautrantika-Yogacara, and the idea that "existents" which aren't unique particulars aren't causally real. This to me seems wrong, I think we can eliminate the unique particulars from a theory and be left with something which is grounded in the particulars' causal properties. This is what some scientific realists do. ---------- My question Assuming it true that there can be causation without causes, then is there any way to argue that the sentences of science, with their unique particulars eliminated, are not conceptually constructed? Perhaps because only those particulars are as such, and so empty; and our ideas about the rest of the world can be grounded in them, without that structure being thereby empty.