Four causes

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In Aristotle's Metaphysics, there are four main causes of change in nature: the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause.

Each of these "causes" was a different sense of the Greek word aition, which Aristotle thought was ambiguous and needed to be clarified. The distinction between them can be understood using a wooden table as an example. The material cause is the wood out of which the table is made; the formal cause is the form or shape of the table; the efficient cause is the carpenter who creates the table; and the final cause is the purpose for which the table will be used, e.g. a desk, an altar, a decorative console, etc.

In Aristotle's own words:

"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; (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. (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. (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. (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.

– Metaphysics 1013a, translated by Hugh Tredennick

Only one of the four "causes" (the efficient cause) approximates the concept expressed by the English word cause as it is normally used today. It has been suggested that an English word of parallel ambiguity is the verb "make". Thus the Greek "x is the aition of y" can be rendered in English "x makes a y". In the case of material cause, we could say "wood makes up a table" or in the case of a car, we could say "steel and rubber make up a car".

Material cause

Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus the material cause of a table is wood, and the material cause of a statue might be bronze or marble.

Formal cause

Formal cause is a concept used by Aristotle, and originates from Plato's theory of forms.

The formal cause according to which a statue is made is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter. Formal cause could only refer to the essential quality of causation. A deeper contemplation reveals a formal cause as the ever-existing truth of capacity. Thus, the capacity of the human genome to accompany the existence of a human being presumes that the capacity to be a human being pre-exists the human being. That pre-existence consists of the essential capacity of the specific genome to co-exist with the human in a very significant and specific way. The dog genome does not cause a human though elements of dog genome may coexist with the human genome.

Efficient cause

The efficient cause is the agent which 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

Final cause, or telos, is defined as the purpose, the good, or the end of something. For example, the final cause of a pen is decent writing. Telos is often used among many ethicists today as it reflects the ancient meaning.

Final cause in science

In science, final causes contrast with physical causes, which, in Aristotle's language, mainly encompass material causes and efficient causes.

Over time, many rejected the idea of a final cause, or the study of the good, because there was too much disagreement. Although science has historically focused mostly on material causes, there has been some discussion and exploration of final causes in a scientific context, especially when studying systems at a macroscopic level.

The laws of thermodynamics can be interpreted as a final cause,^[1] and this perspective is useful for explaining the spontaneous origin of new levels in a hierarchy.^[2] Ecologist Robert Ulanowicz argues that positive feedback in ecosystems can have effects which appear at a local level to be the result of a final cause.^[3]

References

• Cohen, Marc S. "The Four Causes" (Lecture Notes) Accessed March 14, 2006. This is an extremely helpful page, with good explanations of all the causes.

See also

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

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