Aristotle’s Nature, our Nature.
Our ‘nature:’ what we
observe, challenge through experiments, explain by natural laws (the Sciences).
Nature vs. culture. Nature vs. Mind (Descartes). ‘Natural’ vs. the ‘artificial’
(Supplements at Mothers!). – Aristotle’s nature (physics): “natural things are
some or all of them subject to change” (Phys. 185a13). Nature includes
artifacts (constituted by man) and things constituted by nature (living beings,
non-living things. For “things that are constituted
naturally: each has in itself a source of change and staying unchanged” (Phys.
192b13). (plants; animals; the elements; human beings – including their soul,
and their reason (?); the state (!).
Contrast: Non-nature: what is
essentially unchanged and unchanging; what has the source of change and
stability only at its outside.
Realities.
What are the items that
change and how are they ordered?
Ontology: The domain of
entities/realities, some natural, some non-natural. Primary ‘things’ are substance,
reality (the things of our everyday world. “Nothing can exist separately except
a reality; everything else is said of a reality as an underlying thing.”
(185a30) Ontological status of substances, qualities and relations, time &
space, collectives and plurals/collectives, chaos/formless.
Form and matter as
codependent, necessary components of realities. Form: what is it? What kind of
thing is it? Matter: What does the item consist of? What is the item made up
from? The ‘hylomorphic’ world-view. For natural things: involvement in change
as active in bringing about or passive as brought about. The substantialist,
teleological world-view.
‘Natural.’ substances undergo
change: They come to be ‘this reality;’ they stop being ‘this reality;’ they
change while remaining the thing they are. Secondary changes depend on
‘realities’ and are at the same time changes of the reality. (190a340)
Their source of change and
stability is internal (192b14) for natural things. Contrast: artifacts.
Kinds of changes: generation,
destruction, transformation of non-defining features, change of place and time.
Change of form; change of matter.
The concept of change:
The role of opposites and of
the underlying in change 188b22. For generation and destruction: “To come out
of opposite, to pass away into opposites.” ‘ Matter’ as underlying?
Opposites in transformation
of non-defining features: that which changes is a trajectory between opposites.
The underlying is what defines the thing as being ‘that thing.’
In addition we find an
interaction of two potentialities. One, the passive potentiality, is in the
object undergoing change, while the other, the active potentiality, is in the
entity initiating change. The two potentialities need to be accorded with each
other: when there is a potentiality for being heated in the object undergoing
change, the process needs to be initiated by another object possessing an
active potentiality for effecting heat.
Change in Nature:
Nature itself “a sort of
source and cause of change.” Naturally constituted things have in themselves a
source of change and of staying unchanged.” (Physics 2.1, 192b20-23).
An inner principle of change and being at rest. Why ‘inner?’ What is the
inner source of change in a natural substance? For living things: the
activities of the soul and its subfunctions. For things like pebbles and “Skull
Rock” (
Change in a hylomorphically
interpreted world requires at least the following two components: (i) something
suited to be changed in the way specified. (ii) something categorically apt to
have both attributes of the pair of oppositions that constitutes the change.
An explanation for a state of
affairs must specify some fact or object (in general, some abstract or concrete
entity), which is responsible for it. What is, in this sense, responsible is,
Aristotle submits, a cause (aitia or aition, words used
interchangeably by Aristotle). One thing, that accounts for another thing.
Whatever can be offered in such an account is a cause (198a14). The term is
unfortunate. ‘Factor,’ something that explains, giving an account … (We do not
have a good term that includes Aristotle’s aitiai.
Our sense of ‘explanation for
a natural phenomenon’ (causal role in causality interpreted against background
of making, composition in analysis, functions (adaptation) and random changes
(mutations) in the life sciences
Aristotle’s notion: What is
responsible for the features, conditions and the behavior of a reality. What
answers to the question: On account of what …is this an F? On account of what
does this have G? On account of what is this constituted by M? On account of
what does this do what it does? On account of what does this have the power to
bring about H?
Different ways of being
responsible for distinct facets of the same state of affairs. Aristotle groups
the varieties of responsibilities under four headings, the so-called four
causes.
A synopsis (partly drawing on
Stanford Encyclopedia for formulations):
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The material cause: that from which something is
generated, and out of which it is made or constituted, e.g. the bronze of a
statue, the flesh and bones of a body. |
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The formal cause: the structure which the matter
realizes and in terms of which the matter comes to be something determinate,
e.g., the Hermes shape in virtue of which this quantity of bronze is (said to
be) a statue of Hermes, the soul that animates a body; a certain ratio of a
mixture; characters of a process, secondary features of an item |
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The efficient cause: the agent responsible for a
quantity of matter's coming to be informed, e.g. the sculptor who shaped the
quantity of bronze into its current Hermes shape. The art of sculpting for
the sculpture. The form of the tree-to-become in the seed for the tree. The
earthquake for the collapse of the bridge. |
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The final cause: the purpose or goal of the
compound of form and matter, e.g. the statue was created for the purpose of
honoring Hermes. The tree has the purpose to grow into a mighty exemplar of
its species and contribute to the survival of its species. Human animals have
the purpose of letting their lives be guided by and realize their rational
faculties. Each element (fire, air, water, earth) is a final cause in its
tendency to find rest in a certain region of the cosmos. |
Formal and material cause
always together, because form is form relative to a matter, something acts as
matter relative to a form.
Question: What is it to be
that kind of thing? What makes it that the thing is that kind of thing? “What
the being would be?” (194b28, 195a21).
For the item in question, its
organization, its mode of composition, how it is put together. But also what
holds it together, structure, forces that bind, unite, and make one out of
diverse, distinct elements . . .
The form of a house
structures the bricks and mortar from which it is built. When the bricks and
mortar realize a certain shape, they manifest the function definitive of houses,
namely that of providing shelter. Thus, the presence of the form makes those
bricks and that mortar a house, as opposed, e.g., to a wall or an oven.
Bricks and mortar, as matter, are potentially a
house, until they realize the form appropriate to houses, in which case the
form and matter together make an actual house. They are also realities, things
in their own right. So, in Aristotle's terms, the form is the actuality of the
house, since its presence explains why this particular quantity of matter comes
to be a house as opposed to some other kind of artifact.
Note that the bricks are in turn things of the
artifact variety. The question ‘what is it to be a brick’ can be repeated for
them. Their specific form is not subject to internal change. It is only
decaying through the decay of the matter that has been formed into bricks.
Ultimately, we reach the stuff we take from the earth or from a tree, as
something that is a ‘natural’ thing and not an artifact, and therefore has a
principle of change internal to it.
The form of a nugget, the form of a line that
has definite length but neither endpoint nor beginning point. The formal cause
of an octave.
Is the active form doing it? How does it do what
it is supposed to do? His science attests to the presence and
operation of causally active forms at each level of analysis of the physical
world.
What does the thing in
question consist of? What is it constituted by? “That out of which as a
constituent a thing comes to be” (194b23).
Examples: bricks for house;
bronze of statue; letters of syllables; fire etc. of bodies, individuals of
polis, our body relative to the full living human being enlivened and
individuated by its soul; the gold relative to the nugget; the chemical matter
in a log; individuals relative to their state; the musical notes in a melody.
Suitability. Assuming form and aptitude of that which is formed in the change.
That which is brought into form, out of another form.
What is our interest in the
answer? What we can, perhaps need to take to bring about something of a certain
form (bronze for the statue). Also: what we need to do to the matter to give to
it the intended form. A guide to transformations: decay, erosion, and formation
in nature. Characters of the matter will have consequences for the form.
Identity questions: only
form, or also form and matter together?
Out of which does the item
come? From what does the change proceed (195a8)? What is the primary source of
change or the staying unchanged (194b30)?
Makers are efficient causes:
the father, the craftsman, the doctor. Deliberation as efficient cause of
choice. The skill and craft of the maker: out of it comes the product.
initiating processes and bringing about their effects. States and events: labor
as efficient cause of strength, learning of knowledge.
An efficient cause can also
be internal. In cases in which the efficient cause is internal, it will be, in
its specific function, one of the parts, or even the formal aspect, of the entity
caused to move. Organs relative to living body. (198b24 ff.)
Forms can be efficient
causes, as in the seed. The tree comes out of its seed, the form steering the
transformation of the seedling.
Interest in efficient cause?
How to trigger. What to know and what competences to have. Where to start in
order to get to a result? Into what to intervene to bring about a change or to
prevent it (Eryximachus!).
Question: What is the thing
for? On account of what doe he does that? (194b33). What is the thing a means
for? What does need to occur or be done in order to bring about this end?
Asked about realities,
actions, events and processes, tendencies and potentialities. Acting finality:
looking at an action or change, and account for it by pointing to the end it
was promoting. But also: to be a final cause, in the sense of having in oneself
the faculty or power to go towards some end and act as a final cause. What
processes and entities are for, what they objectively intend to attain or go after.
Very wide notion of final cause: “The ‘for something’, then, is present in
things which are and come due to nature.” (199a8).
Form and final cause often
coincide.
Final cause and efficient
cause support each other. Health may come out of walking (efficient cause).
Walking may be the final cause of health of the walker (194b35).
Order of causes.
Collaboration, dependence and
tensions between the accounts in terms of ‘aitiai’/causes:
Matter provides the potentialities, which are
actualized by the form.
Hierarchies of explanation.
In order for a form to be realized, one needs to have suitable matter. This
suitable matter brings with it the features required to form a hylomorphic
composite. These features, then, are the contribution of the matter, and as
such the matter is the (material) cause of everything that depends on the
matter in the reality. On the other hand they are indispensable presuppositions
for the realization of the form, and to that extent the form prompts their
presence. If there is a house to be built, one needs building bricks, slabs,
mortar, etc. Each part provides material with properties within a definite
range of the sort required for a house to come into being. A house cannot, for
example, be made out of liquid water. Some kind of matter is unsuitable for the
form of house.
Achievements and Problems:
Reply: Explanations are not
necessarily a making, not even the efficient variant. Explanations are a form
of understanding. The different causes are so many different ways of
understanding, each of them with a special kind of understanding and different
practical consequences.