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Four Causes refers to an influential principle in Aristotelian thought whereby causes of change or movement are categorized into four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?". Aristotle wrote that "we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause."^[1][2] While there are cases where identifying a cause is difficult, or in which causes might merge, Aristotle was convinced that his four causes provided an analytical scheme of general applicability.^[3]

Aristotle held that there were four kinds of causes:^[2][4]

• A change or movement's material cause is the aspect of the change or movement which is determined by the material which the moving or changing things are made of. For a table, that might be wood; for a statue, that might be bronze or marble.
• A change or movement's formal cause is a change or movement caused by the arrangement, shape or appearance of the thing changing or moving. Aristotle says for example that the ratio 2:1, and number in general, is the cause of the octave.
• A change or movement's efficient or moving cause refers to things apart from the thing being changed or moved, which interact so as to be an agency of the change or movement. For example, the efficient cause of a table is a carpenter, or a person working as one, and according to Aristotle the efficient cause of a boy is a father.
• An event's final cause is the aim or purpose being served by it. That for the sake of which a thing is what it is. For a seed, it might be an adult plant. For a sailboat, it might be sailing. For a ball at the top of a ramp, it might be coming to rest at the bottom.

Meaning of "cause" [edit]

Aristotle's word for "cause" is the Greek αἴτιον, aition.^[5] He uses this word in the sense meaning, an explanation for how a thing came about;^[6] in this context, "x is the aition 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.^[7]

Material cause [edit]

The material cause of an object is equivalent to the nature of the raw material out of which the object is composed. (The word "nature" for Aristotle applies to both its potential in the raw material, and its ultimate finished form. In a sense this form already existed in the material. See Potentiality and actuality.)

Whereas modern physics looks to simple bodies, Aristotle's physics instead treated living things as exemplary. However he also felt that simple natural bodies such as earth, fire, air and water also showed signs of having their own innate sources of motion and change and rest. Fire for example, carries things upwards, unless stopped from doing so. Things like beds and cloaks, formed by human artifice, have no innate tendency to become beds or cloaks for example.^[8]

In Aristotelian terminology, material is not the same as substance. Matter has parallels with substance in so far as primary matter serves as the substratum for simple bodies which are not substance: sand and rock (mostly earth), rivers and seas (mostly water), atmosphere and wind (mostly air below and then mostly fire below the moon). Only individuals are said to be substance (subjects) in the primary sense. In a secondary sense, one can also speak of a genus like fig trees. Finally, secondary substance, in a different sense, also applies to man-made artifacts.

Formal cause [edit]

Formal cause is a term describing the pattern or form which when present makes matter 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. It is associated with theories of forms such as those of Aristotle's teacher, Plato, but in Aristotle's own account (see Metaphysics (Aristotle)), he takes into account many previous writers who had expressed opinions about forms and ideas, but he shows how his own views are different.

See also Platonic realism.

Efficient cause [edit]

The "efficient cause" of an object is equivalent to that which causes change and motion to start or stop (such as a painter painting a house) (see Aristotle, Physics II 3, 194b29). In many cases, this is simply the thing that brings something about. For example, in the case of a statue, it is the person chiseling away which transforms a block of marble into a statue.

Final cause [edit]

Final cause, or telos, is defined as the purpose, end, aim, or goal of something. Like the formal cause, this is a controversial type of cause in science. It is commonly claimed that Aristotle's conception of nature is teleological in the sense that he believed that Nature has goals apart from those that humans have. On the other hand, as will be discussed further below, it has also been claimed that Aristotle thought that a telos can be present without any form of deliberation, consciousness or intelligence. An example of a passage which is discussed in this context is Physics II.8 (from

This is most obvious in the animals other than man: they make things neither by art nor after inquiry or deliberation. That is why people wonder whether it is by intelligence or by some other faculty that these creatures work, – spiders, ants, and the like... It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is present in art, it is present also in nature.^[9]

For example, according to Aristotle a seed has the eventual adult plant as its final cause (i.e., as its telos) if and only if the seed would become the adult plant under normal circumstances.^[10] 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."^[11] 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,^[12] and notes that not all phenomena have a final cause, e.g., chance events.^[13]

The four causes in modern science [edit]

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. He divided knowledge into physics and metaphysics in The New Organon.

From the two kinds of axioms which have been spoken of arises a just division of philosophy and the sciences, taking the received terms (which come nearest to express the thing) in a sense agreeable to my own views. Thus, let the investigation of forms, which are (in the eye of reason at least, and in their essential law) eternal and immutable, constitute Metaphysics; and let the investigation of the efficient cause, and of matter, and of the latent process, and the latent configuration (all of which have reference to the common and ordinary course of nature, not to her eternal and fundamental laws) constitute Physics. And to these let there be subordinate two practical divisions: to Physics, Mechanics; to Metaphysics, what (in a purer sense of the word) I call Magic, on account of the broadness of the ways it moves in, and its greater command over nature. Francis Bacon The New Organon, Book II, Aphorism 9, 1620

It has been argued that explanations in terms of final causes remain common in modern science, including contemporary evolutionary biology,^[14][15] and that teleology is indispensable to biology in general for (among other reasons) the very concept of adaptation is teleological in nature.^[15] 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 Teleology "so that, instead of Morphology versus Teleology, we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology". Darwin quickly responded, "What you say about Teleology pleases me especially and I do not think anyone else has ever noticed the point."^[14] 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."^[14] James G. Lennox states that Darwin uses the term 'Final Cause' consistently in his Species Notebook, Origin of Species and after.^[16]

Ernst Mayr states that "adaptedness... is a posteriori result rather than an a priori goal-seeking."^[17] Various commentators 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."^[18] However, Lennox states that in evolution as conceived by Darwin, it is true both that evolution is the result of mutations arising by chance and that evolution is teleological in nature.^[14]

Statements which imply that nature has goals, for example where a species is said to do something "in order to" to achieve survival, appear teleological, and therefore invalid. Usually, it is possible to rewrite such sentences to avoid the apparent teleology. Some biology courses have incorporated exercises requiring students to rephrase such sentences so that they do not read teleologically. Nevertheless, biologists still frequently write in a way which can be read as implying teleology even if that is not the intention.

See also [edit]

• Anthropic principle
• Causality
• Convergent Evolution
• Four discourses, by Jacques Lacan
• Teleology
• The purpose of a system is what it does, Anthony Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle
• Tinbergen's four questions
• Socrates

Notes [edit]

References [edit]

• 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.
• Hennig, Boris. "The Four Causes." Journal of Philosophy 106(3), 2009, 137–60.
• Moravcsik, J.M. "Aitia as generative factor in Aristotle's philosophy." Dialogue, 14 : pp 622-638, 1975.
• English translation of Study on Phideas, by Pía Figueroa written with theme of Final Cause as per Aristotle [1] PDF file with references

External links [edit]

• 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.
• [2]
• A Compass for the Imagination, by Harold C. Morris. Philosophy thesis elaborates on Aristotle's Theory of the Four Causes. Washington State University, 1981.