Theme: Nature and Causality.

I. Read:

Physics, Book I, Chapters 2, 5, 6, & 7.

Read towards: Basic features of natural things; what counts as a ‘reality’ or substance; the elements of change; the roles of opposites and the underlying in change. Pay particular attention to examples.

Book II. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 7 & 8.

Read towards: Natural things and artefacts, commonality and differences; nature – to be a nature – to have a nature; the roles of form and matter; the four ‘causes; the kind of question that unites them; the role of teleology.

II. Reading questions and passages to be read carefully. (Arranged in the order of presentation in the Physics):

Q: What is a universal basic assumption about natural things? (185a13; 192b). What kinds of things are not natural? (compare 194a2)

Q: What counts as separately existing reality (185a30; 192b35)? (See the Study Question below: Aristotelian Substance.)

Q: What is the role of opposites in change? (188b22-26).

Q: What is the role of the underlying in change? (189a12-189b17; 190a14).

Q: What, according to Aristotle, are the elements of change? (190a17; 191a1)

Q: What are the different ways of ‘coming to be’ – according to Aristotle? (190a.32-190b.9)?

Book II.

Q: What is it to be due to nature, as distinguished to be due to art? (192b9-20)

Q: What is the unitary question, Aristotelian causal analyses are answers to, answers that differ from one kind of cause to the other? (194b20).

Q: About what kinds of things is that question being asked? (examples at 195a15)

Q: The form of causal analysis?

The four causes:

Q: What is the material cause of this statue? (Supposing that it is a bronze statue; (194b23).

Q: How does this answer the question: On account of what is this statue the statue it is?

Q: Think of a thing. Then imagine a constellation where the form of that thing remains, but the matter changes. Now do the opposite: Think of a change in which the form changes, but the matter remains the same.

Q: Let the question be: On account of what is this statue the statue it is? How does the answer: ‘It is made from bronze’ answer that question?

Q: What if something that counts as matter of something is in turn a complex kind of thing, like the brick considered as belonging to the matter of a house?

Q: What does an analysis of the material cause of a thing contribute to an understanding of change?

Formal cause:

Q: Staying with that bronze statue: What is its ‘formal cause?’ (194a27)

Q: Try to characterize the forms of some items. (Examples: a leaf you have found, the house you live in, Saddleback Mountain, the car you drive, the house you live in.)

Efficient cause:

Q: What is an efficient cause? (194b29 and 195a7)

Q: Explain how the art of statue-making is one of the ‘efficient causes’ of the statue.

Q: How and through what is Polyclitus the efficient cause of the statue he sculpts (195a35)? How the seed the efficient cause of the tree; how the doctor of the healthy state of the person who has been ill; how labor of strength (195a9)?

Final cause:

Q: What answers the question: what is the final cause of this item? (194b34; 196b18 & 19).

Q: Specify a final cause for each of the following items: the art of medicine, walking, strength – (you’ll find all of them in Book II. Chapter 3.)

III. Study questions:

Aristotelian substance=Things that ‘are’ in a primary way:

Aristotle’s central concept is that of a reality or substance. Primary, central realities are spatio-temporal items in the world in which we live, things like human beings, their limbs and organs, other animals, plants, their parts like leaves or branches, but also artefacts like houses, beds.

They are, what they are, by possessing essential qualities. Something is a bed because it is something in which you can sleep. Due to being a living being of the animal kind, and endowed with reason a being is a human being. When these essential qualities disappear, the being so conceived goes out of existence. Before they appear the being is not yet in existence. These primary items, substances, come as particular beings. They are also ordered into species and genera, in a hierarchy of criteria that throw a large net of inclusions and exclusions. They are the bearers of qualities, location, quantitative determination etc.

Realities or substances combine matter and form. At least some, indeed many of them, have purposes. All of them are able to be involved in processes of change by contributing to the change of other items, and by changing as a consequence of the action of other items on them. (Passive and active causation of the ‘bringing about’ kind, commonly called ‘efficient causation.’)

To be matter of a substance is to be in the function of matter relative to something that is form. To be the form of something is to be the form realized in some matter. To be is to unite matter and form. The brick in the wall of the house is matter, relative to the form of the house. Taken in isolation, the house is the unity and a unit of form and matter. The house is the form of a thing only because it is made real by its matter. The house appears, as it were, through the material and its organization, i.e. its ‘matter.’

But the house can simultaneously be ‘matter’ in a different respect, for example: It is matter to the form ‘city.’ Matter and form are relative notions. They call out for each other. You need to hold on to the form of something when you try to determine its matter. You need to hold on to something that counts as matter when you try to determine what the form is of some item.

Hylomorphism.

Try to figure out what the central item or entity of Aristotle’s universe is. It is called a ‘reality’ or ‘substance.’ Examples are the objects of the everyday world around us: natural things like plants, animals, rocks, mountains, clouds, puddles. Man-created artefacts like houses, beds, knives, books or computers. Choose any such object that comes to your mind, and try to think, what aspect of it would count as its form, which would count as its matter. (Often there are more possibilities than one.)

Then try to articulate which of its features account for the fact that it is an item of the kind you have chosen. For example: due to what is this concrete tree before you a tree? Try to separate essential elements from elements that are not essential. Think of features that could be missing, and the thing would still be a tree? Think of features that, if they were missing, would prevent that thing from being a tree.

Nature/physis.

Q: Aristotle’s concepts of nature/physis? (185a12; 192b1-16; 198b10-32.)

Change.

Q: Think of events in which something changes. (Perhaps more than one event for the sake of trying several examples. Possible examples: A moves from one place to another; your tooth decays; someone becomes a parent; the weather changes from sunny to cloudy; night sets in after sunset; etc.) What is the ‘underlying’ in each of these changes? Then try to determine the opposites at work in the change.

Q: A problem with the idea that every change has an ‘underlying:’ Let genesis be the coming about of a reality like a human being or a tree. At the beginning that being is not. Then, in the course of change, that being ‘comes to be,’ or, in other words, . Now there is a tree. But at the beginning there is just the seed. It is not yet a tree, lacking the essential features of a tree. What is the underlying in the case of this change from seed to tree? The seed disappears. A tree appears. What, if anything, is the underlying?

Causality and causes.

Q: For all the causes, what is the task of causal analysis?