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Aristotle's Four Causes illustrated for a table: material (wood), formal (structure), efficient (carpentry), final (dining). The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought , categories of questions that explain "the why's" of something that exists or changes in nature.
However, if the cosmos had a beginning, Aristotle argued, it would require an efficient first cause, a notion that Aristotle took to demonstrate a critical flaw. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] [ 24 ] But it is a wrong assumption to suppose universally that we have an adequate first principle in virtue of the fact that something always is so ...
Aristotle argued by analogy with woodwork that a thing takes its form from four causes: in the case of a table, the wood used (material cause), its design (formal cause), the tools and techniques used (efficient cause), and its decorative or practical purpose (final cause).
Aristotle assumed efficient causality as referring to a basic fact of experience, not explicable by, or reducible to, anything more fundamental or basic. In some works of Aristotle, the four causes are listed as (1) the essential cause, (2) the logical ground, (3) the moving cause, and (4) the final cause.
Aristotelianism (/ ˌ ær ɪ s t ə ˈ t iː l i ə n ɪ z əm / ARR-i-stə-TEE-lee-ə-niz-əm) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics.
Aristotle proposed the four causes model to explain change – material, efficient, formal, and final – all of which were grounded on what Aristotle termed the unmoved mover. [16] His ethical views identified eudaimonia as the ultimate good, as it was good in itself. [18]
In the second book, Aristotle starts with a remarkable statement, the kinds of things determine the kinds of questions, which are four: Whether the relation of a property (attribute) with a thing is a true fact (τὸ ὅτι). What is the reason of this connection (τὸ διότι). Whether a thing exists (εἰ ἔστι).
In terms of Aristotle's theory of four causes, a material's non-accidental potential is the material cause of the things that can come to be from that material, and one part of how we can understand the substance (ousia, sometimes translated as "thinghood") of any separate thing.