Four causes

Aristotle held that there were four kinds of causes:

• A thing's material cause is the material it consists of. (For a table, that might be wood; for a statue, that might be bronze or marble.)
• A thing's formal cause is its form, i.e. the arrangement of that matter.
• A thing's efficient or moving cause is "the primary source of the change or rest." An efficient cause of x can be present even if x is never actually produced and so should not be confused with a sufficient cause. (Aristotle argues that, for a table, this would be the art of table-making, which is the principle guiding its creation.)
• A thing's final cause is its aim or purpose. (For a seed, it might be an adult plant. For a sailboat, it might be sailing. For a ball on the top of a ramp, it might be the ball rolling down the ramp.)

Meaning of "cause"

Aristotle's word for "cause" is the Greek αἴτιον, aition. He uses this word in the sense meaning, an explanation for how a thing came about; in this context, "x is the αἴτιον of y" means "x makes a y".

The Greek word derives from the adjective aitios, meaning "responsible." It was originally applied to agents. However, by the time Aristotle used the term, it had come to qualify nonsentient items as well.

Original text

Aristotle introduces his discussion as follows:

"Cause" means: (a) in one sense, that as the result of whose presence something comes into being—e.g. the bronze of a statue and the silver of a cup, and the classes which contain these [i.e., the material cause]; (b) in another sense, the form or pattern; that is, the essential formula and the classes which contain it—e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general is the cause of the octave—and the parts of the formula [i.e., the formal cause]. (c) The source of the first beginning of change or rest; e.g. the man who plans is a cause, and the father is the cause of the child, and in general that which produces is the cause of that which is produced, and that which changes of that which is changed [i.e., the efficient cause]. (d) The same as "end"; i.e. the final cause; e.g., as the "end" of walking is health. For why does a man walk? "To be healthy," we say, and by saying this we consider that we have supplied the cause [the final cause]. (e) All those means towards the end which arise at the instigation of something else, as, e.g. fat-reducing, purging, drugs and instruments are causes of health; for they all have the end as their object, although they differ from each other as being some instruments, others actions [i.e., necessary conditions].

— Metaphysics 1013a, translated by Hugh Tredennick

Aristotle uses the term cause (Greek αἴτιον, aition) to mean an explanation for how a thing came about; "x is the αἴτιον of y" means "x makes a y".

Material cause

Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed, it is the substance which can potentially become a particular type of thing.

Formal cause

Formal cause is a term describing the pattern or form which when present makes substance into a particular type of thing, which we recognize as being of that particular type.

By Aristotle's own account, this is a difficult and controversial concept to try to describe as a cause. It is associated with theories of forms such as that of Aristotle's teacher and friend, Plato, but in Aristotle's own account in his Metaphysics, he takes into account many previous writers who had expressed opinions about forms and ideas, and he distinguishes his thoughts from all of them.

Efficient cause

The efficient cause is the thing that brings something about. For example, in the case of a statue, it is the person chiseling away, and the act of chiseling, that causes the statue. This answers the question: how does it happen? It is the sort of answer we usually expect when we ask about cause; the thing which happened to bring about certain results.

Final cause

Main article: Teleology

Final cause, or telos, is defined as the purpose, end, aim, or goal of something. Aristotle, who defined the term, explicitly argued that a telos can be present without any form of deliberation, consciousness or intelligence in general. For example (and according to Aristotle), a seed has the eventual adult plant as its final cause (i.e., as its telos) if an only if the seed would become the adult plant under normal circumstances. In Physics II.9, Aristotle hazards a few arguments that a determination of the final cause of a phenomenon is more important than the others. He argues that the final cause is the cause of that which brings it about, so for example "if one defines the operation of sawing as being a certain kind of dividing, then this cannot come about unless the saw has teeth of a certain kind; and these cannot be unless it is of iron." According to Aristotle, once a final cause is in place the material, efficient and formal causes follow by necessity. However he recommends that the student of nature determine the other causes as well, and notes that not all phenomena have a final cause in the first place.

The four causes in modern science

See also: Teleology § Teleology_and_science

Francis Bacon wrote in his Advancement of Learning (1605) that natural science "doth make inquiry, and take consideration of the same natures : but how? Only as to the material and efficient causes of them, and not as to the forms." According to the demands of Bacon, apart from the "laws of nature" themselves, the causes relevant to natural science are only efficient causes and material causes in terms of Aristotle's classification, or to use the formulation which became famous later, all nature visible to human science is matter and motion.

In opposition to this view, it has been argued that explanations in terms of final causes remain common in modern science, including contemporary evolutionary biology, and that teleology is indispensable to biology in general for (among other reasons) the very concept of adaptation is teleological in nature. In an appreciation of Charles Darwin published in Nature in 1874, Asa Gray noted "Darwin's great service to Natural Science in bringing back to it Teleology." Darwin quickly responded, "What you say about Teleology pleases me especially and I do not think anyone else has ever noticed the point." Francis Darwin and T.H. Huxley reiterate this sentiment. The latter wrote that "..the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both, which his view offers." Darwin uses the term 'Final Cause' consistently in his Species Notebook, Origin of Species and after.

In opposition to Darwin, Ernst Mayr claims that "adaptedness ... is a posteriori result rather than an a priori goal-seeking." Some view the teleological phrases used in modern evolutionary biology as a type of shorthand. For example, S. H. P. Madrell writes that "the proper but cumbersome way of describing change by evolutionary adaptation [may be] substituted by shorter overtly teleological statements" for the sake of saving space, but that this "should not be taken to imply that evolution proceeds by anything other than from mutations arising by chance, with those that impart an advantage being retained by natural selection." However, James G. Lennox points out that under Darwinist evolution it is true both that evolution is the result of mutations arising by chance and that evolution is teleological in nature.

References

• Cohen, Marc S. "The Four Causes" (Lecture Notes) Accessed March 14, 2006.
• Falcon, Andrea. Aristotle on Causality (link to section labeled "Four Causes"). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2008.

See also

• Anthropic principle
• Causality
• Teleology
• Purpose
• Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle
• Tinbergen's four questions
• Lacan's four discourses

External links

• The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World, By R. C. Sproul
• Aristotle on definition. By Marguerite Deslauriers, page 81
• Philosophy in the ancient world: an introduction. By James A. Arieti. p201.
• Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics. By Joseph Owens and Etienne Gilson.