Examples Of Aristotle's Four Causes
Midterm 1
Aristotle's Four Causes
In Philosophy we were assigned to read Physics Book II, by Aristotle. In the reading he talks about causality and mentions his theories of the four causes. Those four causes are the material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause. In this paper I am going to define the four causes and give a few examples to try and make easier to understand by giving simplified definitions and examples. After I have gone over all of the four causes, I will give my criticism over his theory .
The first cause that Aristotle talks about is probably the most simple of the four. When it comes to the first cause, Aristotle described it as, "out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is called 'cause'"(Aristotle Physics Book II 185). In class we described this as the material cause. Basically what Aristotle meant by this was the materials or "stuff" that is used to make a bigger product. Some examples of this would be the cloth that is used to make our clothing, the glass that is used to make a window, or the parts that are used to help make up our bodies like our organs, muscles and bones. He concludes his definition by saying that these materials lie under species. …show more content…
In Physics, Aristotle defines the formal cause as, "the statement of the essence and its genera"(Aristotle Physics Book II 185). Genera is the plural version of the word genus. What that means is that something belongs to a certain species and with the knowledge that we know of a certain species, we can understand what a certain thing could potentially do over a period of time. One example that I could think of would be an apple seed. We know that it belongs to a species of apple tree, so we know that it could potentially be planted and grow up to be a full apple tree and could produce more apples with more
Aristotle's Four Causes
In Philosophy we were assigned to read Physics Book II, by Aristotle. In the reading he talks about causality and mentions his theories of the four causes. Those four causes are the material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause. In this paper I am going to define the four causes and give a few examples to try and make easier to understand by giving simplified definitions and examples. After I have gone over all of the four causes, I will give my criticism over his theory .
The first cause that Aristotle talks about is probably the most simple of the four. When it comes to the first cause, Aristotle described it as, "out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is called 'cause'"(Aristotle Physics Book II 185). In class we described this as the material cause. Basically what Aristotle meant by this was the materials or "stuff" that is used to make a bigger product. Some examples of this would be the cloth that is used to make our clothing, the glass that is used to make a window, or the parts that are used to help make up our bodies like our organs, muscles and bones. He concludes his definition by saying that these materials lie under species. …show more content…
In Physics, Aristotle defines the formal cause as, "the statement of the essence and its genera"(Aristotle Physics Book II 185). Genera is the plural version of the word genus. What that means is that something belongs to a certain species and with the knowledge that we know of a certain species, we can understand what a certain thing could potentially do over a period of time. One example that I could think of would be an apple seed. We know that it belongs to a species of apple tree, so we know that it could potentially be planted and grow up to be a full apple tree and could produce more apples with more