Four causes
Aristotle’s four kinds of explanation identify what something is made of, its form, what produces it, and the end or purpose it serves.
Material cause: The matter or stuff from which a thing is made. It answers what a thing is made of.
Aristotle’s Physics: Aristotle’s treatise on nature, motion, change, and the principles of natural things. It develops the account of causes and explains how they apply to nature.
Mechanistic philosophy: The view that natural phenomena are explained through matter in motion and mechanical interactions. It rejects final causes as necessary explanations of physical processes.
Bronze statue: A sculpture formed by casting or working bronze into a particular shape. Its bronze, shape, maker, and commemorative purpose illustrate the four causes.
Formal cause: The defining structure or essence that makes a thing the kind of thing it is. It answers what a thing is, beyond its material.
Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Aristotle’s inquiry into being, substance, first principles, and the causes of things. It extends causal inquiry from natural processes to being and first principles.
Francis Bacon: An English philosopher and statesman who promoted empirical inquiry and criticized appeals to final causes in natural science. His critique marks a shift away from Aristotelian purpose in scientific explanation.
House: A building designed to provide shelter and a place for habitation. Its materials, design, builders, and purpose form a clear causal analysis.
Efficient cause: The source of change or motion that brings something about. It answers what initiates a thing’s production or change.
Aristotelian teleology: The view that natural processes and beings are intelligible through their ends or functions. Final causes make purpose and ends part of Aristotle’s explanations.