Aristotle’s model of four causes was broken down by Dr. Andrea Falcon (2019) as:
1. The material cause
2. The formal cause
3. The efficient cause
4. The final cause
Each of the four causes are an expression for the reason why a particular object exists. Aristotle claimed that “men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’ of it” (Matthews, 2018, pg. 12). Dr. Michael R. Matthews claims that Aristotle’s work in science rings into the modern era with its “empiricism, essentialism, naturalism, and teleology” (2018, pg. 5). Each of these four corresponds with Aristotle’s causal model. The material cause is “that out of which a thing comes to be;” naturalism tells us that objects are simply what they are, quantitatively, rather than having a supernatural cause. The formal cause is “archetype,” the essence with which it shares alongside other objects of its type or “form.” Aristotle describe the efficient cause as the “primary source” “e.g… the father [and mother] is the cause of the child.” This, of course, can only be learned via empiricism; by examining the evidence and analyzing the potential explanations. Finally, the final cause is deeply teleological: “the sake of which a thing is done.” We can think of the efficient and final causes a dichotomy: what is the object’s past and future, respectively? The material and formal causes are less strictly dichotomous, but do echo back to Plato’s dualism of the physical world in comparison to the world of forms.
A meta example was promised and is in order. I am writing this paper, right now, at 20:22 on 5/31/2021. My fiancée is sitting right next to me and watching Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In this moment, is there a meaningful way for me to apply Aristotle’s model to the causal existence of this essay? I will try:
The material cause
o This essay is being written on my laptop and being written on Microsoft Word. The material, physical, aspects of this paper are far more extensive and intensive than much of what Aristotle studied. There are servers on Microsoft’s cloud servers currently storing the essay, likely hundreds of miles away from me. The RAM in my computer is holding the essay in local memory. The LED screen on my laptop is displaying the paper. Electrical signals, in combination with computer science which is currently beyond me, contains the information of letters and structure.
The formal cause
o This one is far simpler. This essay is an essay! Essays are a form of writing, and the work here resembles the form which Aristotle himself channeled as he wrote Physics. However, this aspect can be expounded upon further as this essay falls within multiple genres, which can be thought of as “subforms:” philosophical, homework, explanatory, meta, etc.
o This essay is being written on my laptop and being written on Microsoft Word. The material, physical, aspects of this paper are far more extensive and intensive than much of what Aristotle studied. There are servers on Microsoft’s cloud servers currently storing the essay, likely hundreds of miles away from me. The RAM in my computer is holding the essay in local memory. The LED screen on my laptop is displaying the paper. Electrical signals, in combination with computer science which is currently beyond me, contains the information of letters and structure.
The formal cause
o This one is far simpler. This essay is an essay! Essays are a form of writing, and the work here resembles the form which Aristotle himself channeled as he wrote Physics. However, this aspect can be expounded upon further as this essay falls within multiple genres, which can be thought of as “subforms:” philosophical, homework, explanatory, meta, etc.
The efficient cause
o This is me! Scott Ryan Udall, born in St. George, Utah and whose favorite football team is the Baltimore Ravens. I am the artists who paints on this canvas, the dancer who shuffles on stage, etc. However, multiple efficient causes exist for this essay! Both instructors provided the structure for the essay, somebody else made the tools I am using, and so on.
The final cause
o I want to get an A, so I can get a good grade, so I can go to graduate school, so I can have an impact on the philosophy of psychology, to participate in a paradigm shift which helps end the replication crisis. The essay is also a form of entertainment for me, hence me taking on the meta aspect, the expression of ideas for their own sake, and talking about my fiancée’s video streaming habits.
With the explanation complete of what Aristotle’s model is, I am left with two of questions: 1) Is Aristotle correct in saying that the goal of science is to understand causes? 2) Does his model effectively allow me to enumerate and understand causes?
In regards to the first, this question is beyond me and in part the point of the class I am taking right now! Causality does seem central to scientific explanation and the pursuit of truth: systems theorists connect various forces in the world in a consistent whole of causes and effects, geneticists track the causal relationship between DNA and other aspects of biology, and even pseudoscientists like demonologist try and trace strange things in the world to some sort of cause. There are, however, other schools of thought on the matter. Operationalists, for example, work towards conceptual clarity, which sometimes involves causes and sometimes does not. As a laymen, starting in my study of history and philosophy of science, Aristotle’s model seems like a good rule of thumb, though I am not sure that he can express something central to modern physics: the concepts of a law being a cause. Can the universe and its underlying structure be an efficient cause?
For practicality, I also find myself split. I find myself thinking on Dr. Karl Popper’s warnings around finding ourselves in scientific infinite regresses (1959); I implied my thinking on this matter in the example section, where it seemed I could trace back Aristotle’s causes not just on the superficial answer but on deeper, more long-term, causes. It is not self-evident that one should identity the most “immediate cause” (when that is even possible) in many cases. Me writing an essay to “get an A” seems rather meaningless without the context of what that A gets me or what I might do in the future with it. The moon orbits the Earth because of gravity, but that does not make it uninteresting to investigate how it came into Earth’s gravitational pull in the first place.
However, similar to the answer to my first conclusory question, there is a certain “good enough” quality in Aristotle’s work. Professor Nassim Taleb describes heuristics, general rules of thumb, as being the highest form of knowledge because they can improve over time via iteration. In this case, perhaps Aristotle’s method is sufficient because I can innumerate the causes to my heart’s content, and then if I or another person finds that more causal explanation is needed, I can just build on the existing answer. If, for example, a reader of this paper wanted to know more about the causes of this paper related to Microsoft’s cloud servers, I could do in depth research on that topic until satisfaction is reached. Satisfaction is, by the way, a major final cause of why people are scientists.
As I wrap up this paper, I find myself thinking of Galileo’s strawman, Simplicio. Simplicio was an Aristotelian apologist who would probably feel that my “good enough” characterization of the model is an understatement. He likely believed that material causes could help us drill down an object’s causes down to (what we now know to be) its subatomic reality, the entire history of what is has been and why, its final destiny, and point us towards whatever transcendental reality it may or may not be connected to. He may be right! However, there is a good reason why we no longer use the framework: it has become dead language. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes the phenomenon of dead language as terms which “causes lightbulbs to go off” and “deadens [what] lurks behind [terms]” (2015).
Coates applies the concept to terms like “white privilege” and “mass incarceration,” two terms which describe important realities, but which have died in the culture, becoming useless to refer to because they shut down discourse. He advocates for the conversation to evolve, to better capture the ideas in ways which others can understand. Aristotle rests similarly in the picture of science, his words are good enough, but dead; the Kuhnian paradigm has shifted ever since Simplicio got shut down, and now we use words like “quantitative,” “historical,” and “systematic” to refer to causes. Were someone to use the Aristotelian model in a contemporary quantum physics paper, even if they exclusively spoke truth, people would cock their heads and maybe even reject their work. The efficient cause of this is scientific culture, which has its downsides, but has pushed us from an Ancient Greek academy all the way to the moon. The final meta point is this: had Aristotle not put together his ideas I would not be here writing this paper. No matter what words we use, there is not denying the causal link between Aristotle lecturing his students and me sitting here, waiting for my fiancée to come back downstairs with some tea to relax and watch some more TV.
References
Coates, T.-N. (2015). Author's Notes on "Mass Incarceration and the Problem of Language". The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/mass-incarceration-and-the-problem-of-language/405511/.
Falcon, A. (2019). Aristotle on Causality. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/#FouCau.
Matthews, M. R.. (2018). Physics. In History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (pp. 7–32). Springer International Publishing.
Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson & Co.
Taleb, N. N. (2013). Antifragile. Penguin.
o This is me! Scott Ryan Udall, born in St. George, Utah and whose favorite football team is the Baltimore Ravens. I am the artists who paints on this canvas, the dancer who shuffles on stage, etc. However, multiple efficient causes exist for this essay! Both instructors provided the structure for the essay, somebody else made the tools I am using, and so on.
The final cause
o I want to get an A, so I can get a good grade, so I can go to graduate school, so I can have an impact on the philosophy of psychology, to participate in a paradigm shift which helps end the replication crisis. The essay is also a form of entertainment for me, hence me taking on the meta aspect, the expression of ideas for their own sake, and talking about my fiancée’s video streaming habits.
With the explanation complete of what Aristotle’s model is, I am left with two of questions: 1) Is Aristotle correct in saying that the goal of science is to understand causes? 2) Does his model effectively allow me to enumerate and understand causes?
In regards to the first, this question is beyond me and in part the point of the class I am taking right now! Causality does seem central to scientific explanation and the pursuit of truth: systems theorists connect various forces in the world in a consistent whole of causes and effects, geneticists track the causal relationship between DNA and other aspects of biology, and even pseudoscientists like demonologist try and trace strange things in the world to some sort of cause. There are, however, other schools of thought on the matter. Operationalists, for example, work towards conceptual clarity, which sometimes involves causes and sometimes does not. As a laymen, starting in my study of history and philosophy of science, Aristotle’s model seems like a good rule of thumb, though I am not sure that he can express something central to modern physics: the concepts of a law being a cause. Can the universe and its underlying structure be an efficient cause?
For practicality, I also find myself split. I find myself thinking on Dr. Karl Popper’s warnings around finding ourselves in scientific infinite regresses (1959); I implied my thinking on this matter in the example section, where it seemed I could trace back Aristotle’s causes not just on the superficial answer but on deeper, more long-term, causes. It is not self-evident that one should identity the most “immediate cause” (when that is even possible) in many cases. Me writing an essay to “get an A” seems rather meaningless without the context of what that A gets me or what I might do in the future with it. The moon orbits the Earth because of gravity, but that does not make it uninteresting to investigate how it came into Earth’s gravitational pull in the first place.
However, similar to the answer to my first conclusory question, there is a certain “good enough” quality in Aristotle’s work. Professor Nassim Taleb describes heuristics, general rules of thumb, as being the highest form of knowledge because they can improve over time via iteration. In this case, perhaps Aristotle’s method is sufficient because I can innumerate the causes to my heart’s content, and then if I or another person finds that more causal explanation is needed, I can just build on the existing answer. If, for example, a reader of this paper wanted to know more about the causes of this paper related to Microsoft’s cloud servers, I could do in depth research on that topic until satisfaction is reached. Satisfaction is, by the way, a major final cause of why people are scientists.
As I wrap up this paper, I find myself thinking of Galileo’s strawman, Simplicio. Simplicio was an Aristotelian apologist who would probably feel that my “good enough” characterization of the model is an understatement. He likely believed that material causes could help us drill down an object’s causes down to (what we now know to be) its subatomic reality, the entire history of what is has been and why, its final destiny, and point us towards whatever transcendental reality it may or may not be connected to. He may be right! However, there is a good reason why we no longer use the framework: it has become dead language. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes the phenomenon of dead language as terms which “causes lightbulbs to go off” and “deadens [what] lurks behind [terms]” (2015).
Coates applies the concept to terms like “white privilege” and “mass incarceration,” two terms which describe important realities, but which have died in the culture, becoming useless to refer to because they shut down discourse. He advocates for the conversation to evolve, to better capture the ideas in ways which others can understand. Aristotle rests similarly in the picture of science, his words are good enough, but dead; the Kuhnian paradigm has shifted ever since Simplicio got shut down, and now we use words like “quantitative,” “historical,” and “systematic” to refer to causes. Were someone to use the Aristotelian model in a contemporary quantum physics paper, even if they exclusively spoke truth, people would cock their heads and maybe even reject their work. The efficient cause of this is scientific culture, which has its downsides, but has pushed us from an Ancient Greek academy all the way to the moon. The final meta point is this: had Aristotle not put together his ideas I would not be here writing this paper. No matter what words we use, there is not denying the causal link between Aristotle lecturing his students and me sitting here, waiting for my fiancée to come back downstairs with some tea to relax and watch some more TV.
References
Coates, T.-N. (2015). Author's Notes on "Mass Incarceration and the Problem of Language". The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/mass-incarceration-and-the-problem-of-language/405511/.
Falcon, A. (2019). Aristotle on Causality. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/#FouCau.
Matthews, M. R.. (2018). Physics. In History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: New Perspectives (pp. 7–32). Springer International Publishing.
Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson & Co.
Taleb, N. N. (2013). Antifragile. Penguin.
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