influential principle in Aristotelian thought whereby explanations of change or movement

are classified 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]
Aitia, from Greek αἰτία was the word that Aristotle used to refer to the causal explanation
that has traditionally been translated as "cause", but this specialized, technical,
philosophical usage of the word "cause" does not correspond to its most usual uses in
everyday language. The translation of Aristotle's αἰτία that is nearest to current ordinary
language is "explanation".[4][2] In this article, the peculiar philosophical usage of the word
"cause" will be employed, for tradition's sake, but the reader should not be misled by
confusing this technical usage with current ordinary language.
Aristotle held that there were four kinds of answers to "why" questions (in Physics II, 3,
and Metaphysics V, 2):[2][5][4]
 Matter: a change or movement's material "cause", is the aspect of the change or movement which
is determined by the material that composes the moving or changing things. For a table, that might
be wood; for a statue, that might be bronze or marble.
 Form: 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.
 Agent: a change or movement's efficient or moving "cause", consists of 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.
 End or purpose: a change or movement's final "cause", is 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.

The four "causes" are not mutually exclusive. For Aristotle, several answers to the question
"why" have to be given to explain a phenomenon and especially the actual configuration of
an object. For example, if asking why a table is such and such, a complete explanation,
taking into account the four aitias, would sound like this: This table is solid and brown
because it is made of wood (matter), it does not collapse because it has four legs of equal
length (form), it is as such because a carpenter made it starting from a tree (agent), it has
these dimensions because it is to be used by men and women (end).
Meaning of "cause"Edit
In his philosophical writings, Aristotle used the Greek word αἴτιον, aition, a neuter, singular
form of an adjective. The Greek word had meant, perhaps originally in a "legal" context,
what or who is 'responsible', mostly but not always in a bad sense of 'guilt' or 'blame';
alternatively it could mean 'to the credit of' someone or something. The appropriation of
this word by Aristotle and other philosophers reflects how the Greek experience of legal
practice influenced the concern in Greek thought to determine what is responsible.[6] The
word developed other meanings, including its use in philosophy in a more abstract
sense.[7][8] About a century before Aristotle, the anonymous author of
the Hippocratic text On Ancient Medicine had described the essential characteristics of a
cause: "We must, therefore, consider the causes (αίτια) of each [medical] condition to be
those things which are such that, when they are present, the condition necessarily occurs,
but when they change to another combination, it ceases."[9] In the present context, Aristotle
used the four causes to provide different answers to the question, "because of what?" The
four answers to this question illuminate different aspects of how a thing comes into being
or an event takes place.[10]
MatterEdit
Aristotle considers 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 felt that simple natural bodies such as earth, fire, air, and
water also showed signs of having their own innate sources of motion, 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.[11]
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 and then mostly fire below the moon). Only individuals are said to be
substance (subjects) in the primary sense. Secondary substance, in a different sense, also
applies to man-made artifacts.
FormEdit
Aristotle considers the formal "cause" as 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.[citation needed] It is
associated with theories of forms such as those of Aristotle's teacher, Plato, but in
Aristotle's own account (see his Metaphysics), he takes into account many previous writers
who had expressed opinions about forms and ideas, but he shows how his own views are
different.[12]
See also Platonic realism.
AgentEdit
Aristotle defines the agent or efficient "cause"of an object as 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. Only this one of the four causes is like what an ordinary person considers to
be a cause.[13]
EndEdit
Main article: Teleology

Aristotle defines the end, purpose, telos, or final "cause" as that for the sake of which a
thing is done.[14] Like the form, this is a controversial type of explanation in science; some
have argued for its survival in evolutionary biology,[15] while others have denied that it
continued to play a role.[16] It is commonly claimed that Aristotle's conception of nature is
teleological in the sense 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 from Physics II.8,
where he writes

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.[17]