four causes
Why things exist
The four causes are Aristotle's framework for explaining why anything exists or happens.
The material cause is what something is made of; the formal cause is its structure or design; the efficient cause is what brought it about; the final cause is its purpose or end.
The four causes of a statue are bronze, the sculptor's design, the sculptor's work, and commemorating a hero.
The framework dominated Western philosophy for centuries and remains influential in metaphysics.
- substancePhysical material with mass
- purposeReason something exists
- for the sake ofIn interest of
- telosUltimate purpose or goal
- essenceFundamental nature of something
teleology · sculptor · unmoved mover · ontology · statue · actuality · bronze · design · Aristotle · potentiality · explanation · being · why · final · function · intention · form · origin
- AristotleLyceum, Metaphysics, logic, ethics, telos
- Aristotelian philosophysubstance, essence, actuality, potentiality, matter
- AristotelianismAristotle, Aristotelianism, Lyceum, syllogism, Organon
- teleologytelos, purpose, end, ends, goal
- logicpremise, premises, conclusion, conclusions, inference
- scholasticismThomas Aquinas, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, scholasticism, Summa Theologica
four causesNewtonian mechanics
Theory of motion and force
physicalism · reductionism · empiricism · positivism · naturalism