Aristotle's The Four Causes

ARISTOTLE 

Aristotle was the student of Plato and Plato was the student of Socrates. 

Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great. 

Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in 384 B.C. 

Aristotle was sent to Athens when he was about seventeen to study at Plato’s Academy where he stayed and studied for twenty years. 

He opened his own school later in life. 

He died in the year 322 at the age of 62. 

There were fundamental differences between Aristotle and his teacher, Plato

Plato believed that there were two worlds: 

This world, the mundane world in which we live,  is unknowable and unreliable, because we can only perceive it through our ever changing senses. 

The second world is an abstract one, knowable only through our intellect, and far removed from our concept of time and space. 

 In this realm lies the original, the ideal of everything that exists in the mundane plane.  It is perfect and steadfast and eternal. 

 In the other plane, the mundane plane, the one in which we inhabit, reside the inferior copies which are imperfect and subject to decay. 

Plato believes that because we perceive this imperfect world through our imperfect senses, we cannot trust our perceptions.

Aristotle revered his teacher, Plato, and acknowledged his genius, but he rejected Plato’s belief in two separate worlds.  Aristotle believed that the only world we can understand is the world we live in and it is a source of inexhaustible wonder and fascination. 

Aristotle mapped out for the first time many of the basic fields of enquiry: logic

physics

political science

economics 

psychology 

meteorology

rhetoric 

ethics

One of the more basic questions Aristotle asked was what are the objects that comprise this world?

What is being? 

His first important conclusion was that things are not just  the matter of which they materially consist. 

If you commissioned a man (or a woman) to build a house, and his truck unloaded the tiles and bricks and lumber on your property and he said, “There you are!  There’s your house!”  You would think he was nuts!  

For it’s not the materials which make up the house, but the structure, the very specific way in which these materials are put together to create the house. 

Aristotle extends this argument to species. We do not call all the different kinds of dogs dogs because they are made of the same material, but because of the very distinctive organization and structure which they share, and which differentiates them from other animals that are likewise made of flesh and blood.

Aristotle has established that a thing is whatever it is by virtue of its form. 

THE FOUR CAUSES

Aristotle breaks the concept of form down into four different and complementary kinds of cause.

The Material Cause or the First Cause:

What is the material from which the thing is made? 

Let’s take the example of a marble statue.  For this to be a marble statue, first of all, it needs to be made of marble. But this is not enough for it to be a marble statue. 

The Efficient Cause or the Second Cause: 

For the marble statue to come into existence, it needs to have been hewn out of a block of marble by a chisel and hammer. 

This is what Aristotle called the “Efficient Cause” or the “what actually makes it come into being”.

The Formal Cause or the Third Cause: 

This is the shape or form of the thing.  This is the form by which we can determine an animal is a dog or a cat.  A block of marble randomly hacked out is not a statue - although some people might argue with you on that point - 

The shape that gives the thing its form is what Aristotle called the “formal cause”. 

The Final Cause or the Fourth Cause: 

This is the intention on the part of the creator.  

The other three causes have been called into operation in order to realize an intention:  the overall reason for the statue’s existence is that it is the fulfillment of the creator’s purpose.

Aristotle calls this the final cause: the ultimate reason for all the other causes.