Nature, Cause and Change in Aristotle

1

• Lecture 2
• Nature, Cause and Change in Aristotles Physics
• Nature.
• 1.1 Matter and Form.
• 1.2. Potentiality and Actuality
• 2. Cause and Explanation.
• 3. Change

2
Aristotles Physics

• Aristotles theory of the nature of things
  especially of change.
• Nature things that grow - ????? / ???
• Aristotle thinks he can unproblematically
  identify things that exist by nature (phusei) or
  which are due to nature e.g. living organisms,
  animals and plants.

3

• All these things animals, and their parts,
  plants and simple bodies like earth, air fire and
  water plainly differ from things that are not
  constituted naturally each has within itself a
  source of change and staying unchangedA bed, on
  the other hand or a coat or anything else of that
  sort..insofar as it is the outcome of art, has no
  innate tendency to change.

4

• This suggests that nature is a sort of source and
  cause of change and remaining unchanged in that
  to which it belongs primarily and of itself. I,2,
  192b12
• Examples - a plant or animal compared to say, a
  bed.
• The bed has a source of remaining unchanged
  sameness- within it. But not a source of change.

5

• Compare this with an acorn or, say a tadpole.
• Antiphons example of the bed. 193a12.
• A bed does not bring itself into being unlike
  an Oak tree. The beds existence depends on the
  existence of the carpenter.

6

• At this point Aristotle makes two further
  distinctions
• Matter and Form.
• Potentiality or power (dunamis) and actuality
  (energeia).
• With the help of these he will argue for two more
  theses.
• 1 What a thing is its nature is its form,
  not its matter. (See for example 193b5)
• 2 What a thing is its complete actualisation
  its end or telos. II, 2, 194a 20 194a 27. (See
  also Politics 1252 b 30)

7

• 1. Matter and Form
• Aristotle is really interested in the nature of
  living beings, but he uses artefacts as a useful
  point of contrast.
• Antiphons example was supposed to show that the
  real nature of the bed is wood or that the
  matter is prior to the form, and the form is
  accidentally imposed on it.
• This is the view that Aristotle disputes, namely
  that what a thing is fundamentally, is its
  matter.
• It is an awful example. Why?

8

• Aristotle agrees that artefacts have their form
  imposed upon their matter, as it were from
  outside.
• He denies that this means that a bed, the nature
  of the bed, is the timber out of which it is
  made. Until the carpenter comes along, and
  imparts the form of a bed onto it, the wood is
  only a potential, not an actual bed.
• In this respect natural things are different to
  artefacts. (The tadpole will (under the right
  conditions) become a frog under its own steam. No
  external agency is required.)

9

• With artefacts (but not plants and animals) one
  can distinguish easily enough between the matter
  and the form the bed, form of the bed. Try doing
  this with a Frog or a human being.
• Organisms are matter that is organized form all
  the way down. Human beings have parts organs.
• (A part is not a bit. For Aristotle a part
  shares in the end of the whole.)
• But these organs are themselves composites of
  matter blood, flesh, bone that is itself
  organised. (Animals are not heaps or agglomerates
  of stuff they are organised matter. They contain
  an internal principle of organisation, which is
  its form.

10

• 2. Potentiality or power (dunamis) and actuality
  (energeia).
• In natural beings (animal and plants) the
  development of this form (in matter) is their
  internal principle of a) change and b) remaining
  the same or their nature.
• We should not forget b). A tadpole does not under
  its own steam develop into a goat or a whale. If
  it develops it develops into a frog.
• But we do not find the form of a Frog in a
  tadpole. This is an unusual example. But
  Aristotle thinks this holds quite generally. One
  cannot find the form of a being inscribed in a
  young or immature specimen.

11

• But the young organism does have the power or
  potential to realise this form.
• (Unlike an artefact. Polypropylene has certain
  physical characteristics due to its chemical and
  physical structure but it does not contain the
  power to be moulded into a chair or boat.)
• The natural growth of the organism is directed
  towards its final end or telos acorn to oak
  tree, tadpole to frog.
• For whatever is the telos of the coming into
  existence of any being, that is what we call its
  nature of man for instance or a horse or a
  household. Politics 1252b33

12

• This is why what a thing is, is its form or
  rather - we can be more specific is the
  complete actualisation of this form in matter.
• The form has a better claim than the matter to
  be called nature. For we call a thing something,
  when it is that thing in actuality, rather than
  just potentially. II, 1, 193b7
• N.B. Of course Aristotle thinks that this form
  is real, not in our minds. Just like the form of
  a shell is in the shell. This is why, when we
  have the notion of a shell, we can understand its
  nature. Nature is intelligible in virtue of its
  form, not in virtue of its matter. Matter as such
  formless stuff is (or would be if there were
  any) unintelligible.
• Substance and form. Natural forms are
  ontologically basic. Substance is determined by
  form and is the reality on which everything else
  depends. (C.f. modern science.)

13

• Cause and Explanation
• Aristotles Four Causes aitia
• Four answers to the question why?
• Aristotles Four Be(cause)s
• Four ways of stating what a thing is.

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• We have already seen these four causes.
• These are listed in II,3.
• The matter or material cause.
• (The stuff or matter.)
• The form (formula) or formal cause.
• (The model or account.)
• The efficient or moving cause.
• What brings it into being.
• The final cause.
• The in order to. What a thing is for.

15

• Aristotle does not justify this fourfold
  typology. Maybe he takes it to be a reflection of
  ordinary speech. Some think he gets it from
  Platos Timaeus.
• Aristotle thinks that all these things can be
  causes.
• Very different from modern notions of cause, and
  causal explanation.
• 1. No problem with overdetermination.
• 2. Causes are not events.
• 3. Not primarily concerned with prediction, but
  with form and order.