Aristotle.pdf

ARIST OTLE 47 1., t I 5 ARISTOTLE. The thought ofAristotle (384-322 BC), one of the most influential philosophers in history, is of enormous significance for the history of science and for its eventual relationship with Christianity. A versatile thinker, Aristotle pursued "natural philosophy," a stu...

ARIST OTLE 47 1., t I 5 ARISTOTLE. The thought ofAristotle (384-322 BC), one of the most influential philosophers in history, is of enormous significance for the history of science and for its eventual relationship with Christianity. A versatile thinker, Aristotle pursued "natural philosophy," a study of nature that today would be called science and a subject he distinguished from mathematics and metaphysics. Natural philosophy is aimed at finding objective knowledge, which can be obtained by means of inductive logical arguments rooted in our experience of the operations of nature. Inductive reasoning about causes and effects helps the mind to grasp the essence or nature of things by a process of intuition. In this way, we come to know first principles, especially of essences, and also gain knowledge of their causes. Aristotle approached questions about the natures of things through a study of the concept of substance, which he used to describe individual things that exist, such as this man, this horse, this dog. He defined a substance as chat which has properties but is not itself a property (e.g., a dog has properties, such as a shaggy coat, but is not itself a property). Aristotle developed his view of substance by introducing his famous account of the four causes. He identified the material, formal, efficient, and final causes of an object (see Aristotle's Four Causes). The notion of a final cause was especially significant because it raised the question of the purpose of an object, in addition to asking who made it or how it was made. Aristotle therefore introduced the notion of teleology into philosophy and science. We need to know why things exist, a question that can be asked of everything in nature, including plants and other species but also about man, an approach that led to the development ofAristotle's influential virtue theory of ethics. Moreover, it is a question we can study empirically. The empirical nature of teleological inquiry is one of the reasons the concept became so interesting. Unlike Aristotle himself, later Christian thinkers developed the overall question raised by the concept of final cause, the question of design in the natural world and in the universe, the question of why nature exhibits teleological goals. It wasn't until 1,500 years later, after the development of the scientific method in Galileo and Newton, that final causes began to drop out of the discipline of science. But the teleological question, of course, did not go away, and it led eventually to clashes with the theory of evolution, especially to atheistic or naturalistic interpretations of it. 48 ARISTOTLE'S FOUR CAUSES Aristotle's metaphysical views and his understanding of causation found further expression in his understanding of the nature of God. He argued chat we need a cause co account for che eternity of motion in che world, and chis cause is God, an argument chat was a forerunner of che cosmological argument. He further held chat God is che final cause of che universe rather than che efficient cause, because efficient causes are acted on and so are subject co change, but God (che "Unmoved Mover") is a perfect, unchanging being. He concluded that God must be a nonphysical or incorporeal being, because if God were made of matter, he would be subject to change and would also need a cause. Later thinkers, including Thomas Aquinas, took up Aristotle's ideas, and consequently his views became very influential in the historical development ofvarious Christian concepts, especially concerning che nature of God, design in nature, and the nature of the moral life. Brendan Sweetman REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING Aristotle. Ethics; Metaphysics; Physics (any edition). Barnes, Jonathan. 200 I. Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford. Gilson, Etienne. God and Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sweetman, Brendan. 2010. Religion and Science: An Introduction. New York: Continuum. ARISTOTLE'S FOUR CAUSES.Aristotle's (384-322 BC) ideas on causation had a great influence on Western approaches co science, religion, and ethics. The metaphysical question "What is being?" or "What is substance?" led him co make a detailed study of the natures or essences of things. He asked commonsense questions about the nature of substances and their properties, how substances come into and go out of existence, how they change, and what their purpose is. Individual substances, he argued, consist of matter (the material out of which they are made) and form (the "arrangement" of the matter). For example, a table is made out of wood arranged in the form of a table. Change then is the process of bringing a potentiality in ·a substance to fulfillment; for example, an acorn has the potentiality to become an oak tree. Aristotle then developed an account of the four causes as a way of elaborating his insights into the nature of things. The matter out of which an object is made is the material cause, and rhe arrangement of the marcer can be said ro be the formal cause. In addition, that which brings the object into existence is the efficient cause. There is also a final cause, which is the purpose (telos) of the obJ·e. ct or wh. for. For example, the matenal cause of a vase h at tt is IS t e c) efficient cause is the potter, the formal cause is h ay, the t e arra ment of the clay, and the fimal cause is a holde f. ngc. ro 1 The notions of efficient cause and final cause tqUt'd... I , Were~& dally interesttng m Anstot es approach. While th --t'C·. c. c qucstio of efficient cause 1orccs us to rea11ze the concing n.. o ff·tna I cause ency of all events.in our universe, chc nouon t · ocuscs O che fact that all objects have a purpose, natural b· n ·C. l b' 0 JCCts(a man an acorn) as we 11 as art1r1c1a o Jects (a cableo '. r a lllUsical instrument). We can discover the purpose by exa.. m1n1ng objects empirically. Even though we may sometimes d' about the telos, it is still true that there is a telos, and~ a key face about nature. The notion of teleology has important implications for our understanding of ourselves as human beings and of the universe. First, it raises the question of design in the universe, how things came to be the way they are and how chcy gOl their purpose. In addition, the notion of an efficient caUSc laid che groundwork for the argument that the universe cannot be the cause of itself, nor can its ultimate explanation come from within itself, a prominent argument in the Christian tradition. Instead, the universe needs an outside sustaining cause chat is responsible for its existence, and dus is God (though Aristotle himself concluded that God is the final, not the efficient, cause of the universe). Second, the question of everything having a nature prompted Aristotle to argue that there is a human nature consisting of traits and characteristics that, although part of our essence, arc DO( merely biological. These traits include reason, free will, and the moral virtues; although latent, they must be brought to fruition by instruction, training, and the wisdom that comes with experience. This approach proved attractive because it provided a philosophical foundation for the moral life. which inspired many Western systems of education. Aristotle's account of causation gradually slippcdourol science after Newton, especially the formal and final causes, but the questions his account raises have remained among the most interesting in philosophy and theology. His account of human nature, also championed by Thomas Aquinas, was very influential in the development of Christiaa edakalt led to clashes with later materialistic or reductionistic views of human nature and with various views of biological determinism, which became more prominent in the cwencieth century in such thinkers as Danid Dennett ancf E. 0. Wilson. Brmdan Swtttld I t REFERENCES A N D R E C O M M E N D E D R E A D IN G. I EthitJ; Mrt11phy1ics; f>hy1ics (~ny cd i1 io n). ~ns101 e. ou dk r, Jo hn. 2013. AriJ~otlri C~ncrpt ,JC o 'h an a. A lb an y: SU N Y Press. Gilson, Ecienne. 1984. fr om Ar m or lr to D Jr u m an d B, uk Ag.till. S.rn Fran- cisco: Jgn~1ius. M R. ZOOB.Ari1101leo11 Trlrology. N ew York: O xf or d Univcr~icy Pre- , Joh nson,.. ,..cetm~n'. Br en da n. 2010. Rrl1g1011 an d Sor11a: A n In tro du ct io n. N ew 5 Ynrk: Con1inuum.