PKU2 CAUSATION 2 Aristotle: On Four Aspects of Causation
Introduction:
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) had an extraordinary ability to describe all the relevant
possibilities in a subject by analyzing what made sense to a Greek philosopher of his
time. He did it so well that his influence on later Western thinking has been very great,
diminishing in recent times as modern science has suggested alternatives.
Here he focuses on causation, which seemed to him an indispensable form of
knowledge. Causation was important as knowledge because it was a way of analyzing
(sorting into labeled categories) what controlled the flow of events. Where the Chinese
tradition tended to accept the changeable flow of events and to build a worldview
around the expectation of change, the West sought ways of defining a stable reality.
Explaining what caused events seemed implicitly to reassure Western thinkers that they
were in some sense “in control” of change. In short, Aristotle’s concerns are
philosophical, motivated by a desire to describe what humans can understand as fully
and completely as possible.
His four-part philosophical analysis of causation invites comparison with the more
focused derivative of it which modern science uses for a different goal: control over
events [link: modern science].
Aristotle’s immediate examples concern an imaginary bronze statue of Socrates.
Text (about 350 BCE):
We must proceed to consider causes, their character and number. Knowledge (Latin:
scientia) is the object of our inquiry, and men do not think they know a thing till they have
grasped the “why” of it. So clearly we too must do this as regards both coming to be and
passing away and every kind of physical change, in order that, knowing their principles,
we may try to refer to these principles each of our problems.
In one sense, then, (1) that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is
called “cause,” e.g. the bronze of a statue and the genus (larger category) of which it (the
bronze) is a species (smaller category).
[“material cause”: includes not just the bronze of which the statue was made but also the genus known
as metals, the larger category to which this material belongs.]
In another sense (2) the form or the archetype, i.e. the statement of the essence,
and its general types, are called “causes,” e.g. a statue of Socrates would have as one
formal cause “the shape of Socrates.”
[“formal cause”: the relation of the parts according to a predetermined definition.]
Again (3) the primary source of the change or coming to rest, e.g. the sculptor of the
statue is an efficient cause of that statue.
[“efficient cause”: generally what makes what is made and what causes change in what is changed.]
Again (4) in the sense of end or “that for the sake of which” a thing is done, e.g.
honoring Socrates is the cause of the statue.
[“final cause”: the end to which something is dedicated.]
All these things are “for the sake of” the end, though they differ from one another in
that some are activities, others instruments. This, then, perhaps exhausts the number of
ways in which the term “cause” is used (when one attempts to answer the question “why?”). . . .
Here are the four types applied to another example, the building of a building:
1 MATERIAL CAUSE: the materials that go into the making of the building, in the
sense of that from which. What is this building made of?
2 FORMAL CAUSE: the essence, the whole form that follows from the way the parts
are combined in the sense of following what essential model? What type and style of
architecture are exemplified by this building?
3 EFFICIENT CAUSE: the maker: the designer, the builder and the workers cause
the building to come into existence, in the sense of whence the change or stability
originates? Who made this building?
4 FINAL CAUSE: what is the goal of this building in the sense of that for the sake of
which it was built. What use is this building designed to serve?
[Source: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8ph/book2.html, 070607, Aristotle, Physics, Book
II, Part 3, translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, modified.]
Study questions:
1. How easy is it to apply Aristotle’s four-part analysis of causation? Pick a Chinese
cultural artifact and analyze its four causes in Aristotelian fashion.
2. To identify a “cause” is to assume that, for any given event, we humans can
separate out various causal agents from one another. In regard to a complex event,
do you believe this is either (1) possible or (2) realistic? Why or why not?
3. Aristotle thought he had identified all the types of cause necessary to explain how
and why things happen. Do you think he was right or might there be other factors he
neglected?
Excerpted from pp 913-14 on CD-ROM, in Western Civilization with Chinese
Comparisons, (WCwCC), 3rd ed, Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2010