Page 9 - GALIET PHYSICS BLOSSOMS I+

I. ARISTOTLE’S 4 CAUSES
Aristotle argued that a complete understanding of any physical object could be attained once the 4 “causes” of that object had been exhaustively described.
(i) Explain what Aristotle meant by this and explain what each cause was.
Given that Plato’s Theory of eternal and unchanging Forms does not explain change or the coming into being or perishing away of things, Aristotle attempts to fully and completely explain the nature of change of a particular substance through his four causes or types of explanation (causes is Gr. “aition”) by invoking the idea of potentiality. For Aristotle “substances change in order to fulfill their potentiality,” that is, they evolve to acquire more form, making the substance more “actual.” To Aristotle, change is related to time and motion, and motion and rest to phusis or Nature. Things change or move because they seek to fulfill their potentiality (a seed, for example, will seek to fulfill its potentiality by becoming a tree, that is, the essence or primordial substance of the tree is the seed).
Aristotle was aware that the Presocratics used all the conceptions of causality, but only partially. The Pythagoreans, for example, considered number and geometrical figures as causes, but these were only formal causes (models). Empedocles considered Love and Strife as causes, but these were only efficient ones. Anaxagoras made of Nous a cause, but this was only a final cause. In general, when Grecians postulated that “nothing comes out nothing,” they were affirming that all things have an explanation or cause. Plato too distinguished between primary (the intelligible, universal Forms) and the secondary causes (the sensible, particular ones),1 and these were subordinated to the primary ones.
Aristotle’s four causes or four explanations in his Metaphysics and Physics consist of the formal, the material, the efficient and the final causes:
1. The Material cause is what an object is made of, its type of matter. 2. The Formal cause is an object’s form or paradigm.
3. The Efficient cause is the set of actions that causes the
object’s change. Who or what changes it?
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