The Four Kinds of Causes: Matter, Form, Mover, End

Orientation #

He opens by saying Aristotle’s arguments that end is a cause in the natural world attach to this reading but are not to be taken up yet; “just that first reading is enough”, Reading 5. At the end he promises the per se / per accidens distinctions “maybe later on a little bit” and refers ahead to the question “does nature act for an end”. The previous class closed Physics I and previewed Book II’s four causes; the next takes up the corollaries Aristotle draws from the distinction.

The class, in order #

1. A common notion of cause (“responsible for the being or becoming of another”) #

He gives a common notion before the four kinds: the Greek aitia has the sense of being responsible, so a cause is what is responsible for the being or becoming (existence or coming into existence) of another, not of itself; the other is the effect, which depends on the cause.

• Why both words, being and becoming: something can depend on a cause for its coming-to-be and then exist without it (the wooden chair came to be through the carpenter, but is now without him); something can depend on a cause for both (the chair could not come to be without wood, and depends now on the wood inside it).
• The four kinds of cause are also four basic senses of the word “cause”; the distinction matters for natural philosophy but is of more universal importance.

2. First kind: matter (“that from which something comes to be, existing within it”) #

Matter is defined by two parts, and he asks why the second is necessary.

• Reason for “existing within it”: things are also said to come to be from their opposite (the hard from the soft, the wet from the dry), but the soft is not in the hard, so the second part separates matter from the lack or contrary. To a lesser extent it also separates matter from the mover or maker (the chair came from the carpenter, who is not inside it) and from the whole (a part taken from a car at the used-car lot, a page ripped from a book: the whole is not in the part).
• Aristotle’s examples are all artificial: bronze of the statue, silver of the cup, glass of the glass, wood of the chair. Why, since “Aristotle’s choice of examples is always significant, as De Koninck used to say”? Because we make them, so the matter is more known to us than in natural things. The chemists are right that hydrogen and oxygen are the matter of water, but that is less known to us.
• Student: metal instead of bronze, wooden desk instead of oak desk: still the same kind of cause.
• Student: if water came from hydrogen and oxygen by a substantial change, they would not be in the water. He agrees: then it would not be matter in the compositional sense; like a sphere made from a cube, the cube shape is not there once the sphere is.
• What to know for each kind: the name, the definition, and examples.

3. Second kind: form, and form versus model (“the account or the definition of what was to be”) #

The Greek for “account” is logos; form is the definition of what was to be.

• “What was to be” contrasts with the matter: what was to be from the wood was a chair. If you define the chair you do so more by form than matter: a metal chair and a wooden chair are both chairs; this table is a table, not a chair, though of the same matter generically.
• Preview: nature is both matter and form, but by matter you have a natural thing only in ability, by form actually, so nature is more form than matter (taken up in segment 10).
• Aristotle’s example, two to one of the octave (diapason), comes from Pythagoras, who discovered simple numerical ratios underlying harmonious sounds (the fifth, 3:2, “we saw that thing by Ratti”); it is a kind of compliment to Pythagoras, who introduced this second kind of cause and stands out as odd beside Thales, Anaximenes and the poets of Mother Earth. In the first book of Wisdom it is mainly Pythagoras and Plato who talk about form; in mathematics the formal cause is the only cause in the strict sense.
• Form vs. model: the form is intrinsic to the thing; the model is an extrinsic form that one imitates or copies. Examples: patterns on the wall in his father’s farm-wagon factory, taken down and copied for an order of 500 wagons; copying a painting; the woman who models a dress (you get a dress like the one she wears, not that one); children imitating the accent and way of speaking of parents and teachers, so the form of the parents’ speech is a cause of the form of the child’s speech.

4. Third kind: the mover or maker (“whence first there is a beginning of change or rest”) #

He explains the two odd words in the definition and the two examples.

• Why “first”: change begins with some matter that can be formed or pushed, but the wood just sits there without the carpenter; “first” separates the mover from the matter, so it is not merely repeating “beginning”.
• Why “or rest”: as in the definition of nature, “beginning and cause of motion and of rest, in that which it is first as such, and not by happening”. It is due to nature not only that the tree, the man, the cat grow, but that they stop growing at a certain height, different for different kinds (a pet tiger grows too big before it stops).
• Examples: the adviser and the father of the child, one taken from reason, one from nature: the two movers clear to us in experience, God being hidden. He ties this to the earlier division of order: the order not made by reason is that made by nature, and the orders made by reason in its own acts, in acts of the will and in exterior matter. Looking around the room, most of what one sees is artificial (made by art, hence by reason) except faces and hands; in the woods most is natural, except a beer can.
• Why father rather than mother: the mother is associated with the cause called matter (the oldest opinion of first matter was Mother Earth; Latin materia is referred back to mater; most of the baby’s matter over nine months comes from the mother, and after birth her milk). This looks back to Heraclitus, who emphasized change, perhaps chose fire because he was thinking of the cause of motion, and said “war is the father of all things”, not mother, a sign he was thinking of another kind of cause than matter. It is also why God is called father rather than mother: God is a cause as mover or maker, not as matter.
• “In general the one making of the thing made, and the one bringing about the change of the thing changed”: so the maker is put under this kind. Student: are persons as examples significant? He supposes they are more known.
• Aside: cats Tabitha (rough, sent downstairs in the evening) and the docile Mop.

5. Fourth kind: the end, and the series of ends (“that for the sake of which”) #

The end is defined simply as that for the sake of which; one may add “something is or is done”, but it is unnecessary. The chair is for the sake of sitting, walking for the sake of health.

• Aristotle shows at more length that end is in fact a cause, since it is more obscure: health of walking around, “for an account of what does he walk?” and “we think we have rendered the cause”: “we” is not the Greek natural philosophers but men in general.
• Not only the last thing is an end; there are many ends in an order. His medical example (Aristotle being a doctor’s son): tools, drugs, purgation, thinning: a tool for the sake of the drug, the drug for purgation, purgation for thinning; all for the sake of the end, but differing as deeds, tools and so on. His own: walking to the drugstore for buying aspirin, buying for taking, taking for getting rid of the headache, perhaps for something further. Thomas Aquinas: I study the body to understand the soul, the soul for the angels, the angels for God; the ultimate end is to know God, yet the others are still ends.
• The same holds of the other causes: the folder and the hand both move the paper across the table, the hand more; a paragraph is made of sentences, sentences of words, words of syllables, syllables of letters, all matter in an order. Aristotle goes on to this but not explicitly here.

6. Student question: end versus object (“is there a distinction between end and object”) #

Prompted by Thomas’s commentary on Hebrews (definition of faith, theological virtue), where God is called both end and object, a student asks why both words.

• His answer: there is a distinction; “object” does not name a kind of cause as explicitly as “end”. In the fifth book of Wisdom are the different meanings of end or limit, and the object is in a way a limit. In Aristotle one usually speaks of objects with the powers of the soul: powers are distinguished by acts, acts by objects (color and sound differ, so sensing color and sensing sound differ, so the abilities differ).
• Student: is color the end of the eye? It feels more natural to say “to see” is the end of the eye, but to specify seeing one must say it is sensing color; so end and object may run together, as in the theological virtues where the object, God, is also our end, without the words meaning the same. Student: end seems to go with a verb, object with a thing.
• Senses of end in Wisdom V: end in quantity (the end of the table), end of a motion, end of intention, the last being the sense meant here. Warning against the equivocation: “happiness is the end of life; the end of life is death; therefore happiness is death” (Thomas notes two meanings of end in the Nicomachean Ethics). A student once argued that if nature acted for an end all things would come to an end, and that the doctrine would be pessimistic: mixing up the two senses.

7. “Said in so many ways” and distinctions within each kind (“the causes then are perhaps said in so many ways”) #

Thomas’s comment on this line: within each kind one can make further distinctions, as before and after within end, mover or matter (just shown), and per se and per accidens, to be discussed later.

8. Why this order: the historic order (“this is the historic order”) #

He asks whether there is a reason for the order matter, form, mover, end; a hint is that Aristotle stops to show the end is a cause, as if it were less manifest. Two things can be said; the first is that it is the historic order in which the causes came to light.

1. The poets (Mother Earth), Thales (water), Anaximenes (air): looking for matter.
2. Pythagoras introduced the cause he knew from mathematics, form.
3. Heraclitus hints at the mover (“war is the father of all things”, fire perhaps as mover); Empedocles (earth, air, fire, water as matter; love and hate as movers, though sometimes mixed with matter) and Anaxagoras (mind, in no way mixed with matter) separate the mover. Empedocles, with his numerical ratio in bone, flesh and blood, has three kinds of cause; Anaxagoras still three. [ed.: transcript attributes the ratio once to “Anaxagoras”, apparently a slip or mis-hearing for Empedocles.]
4. Socrates in the Phaedo was enthusiastic about Anaxagoras’s mind but expected him to go on to end or purpose, since mind acts with something in mind; Anaxagoras did not, so Socrates, Plato and Aristotle introduced the fourth kind, the end.

9. Why this order: reason forced from the more known (“forced by truth itself”) #

The more important reason is the order of the more known to the less known, in which reason is best forced to admit each cause. He notes that in Greek philosophy the historic order is largely the order of learning, unlike modern philosophy: the Greeks were the first philosophers and so began naturally with what is more known to us, whereas after centuries a man begins wherever the book he picks up or Professor X’s course begins; later philosophers tend to begin where the man before them left off.

• Example one, the word “cat” on the board: (1) its most undeniable dependence is on C, A and T (take them away, nothing is left): matter, since it came from them and they are inside it. (2) “act” has exactly the same letters, as “dog” and “god”; so the word depends on something besides the letters, their order: form, which means not only shape but order, ratio. (3) The same letters get into different orders, so the order does not come from the letters; something orders them, the writer: the mover or maker. (4) The writer’s ability is for more orders than the one he gave; why this order rather than T-N-C? For the sake of talking about his favorite pet, or about act and ability and God as pure act: the end.
• Example two, the wooden chair: (1) take away all the wood and metal and nothing is left, so it most undeniably depends on the wood. (2) The table has the same kind of wood but is not a chair; if wood explained everything the table would be a chair; so the shape. (3) The same wood gets into the shape of chair, desk or table, so the shape is not from the wood: the carpenter. (4) The carpenter’s ability is not limited to the slightly obtuse angle of the chair’s back; he could make it acute, the bed with a rocky shape, the roof flat or a V; so why this shape? For the sake of sitting (an acute back gives back problems), of not rolling off the bed, of keeping rain and snow out (the new drugstore in Shrewsbury whose flat roof collapsed under snow and was rebuilt otherwise).
• “Exactly the order that Aristotle gives them”: both the historical order and the order in which reason is forced. No one has added a fifth kind of cause since the fourth century BC; Hume, whose discussion influenced Kant, does not even see all four, begins with the third, and so knows fewer causes and out of order: “that’s life in the modern world”.

10. Questions: non-personal movers, “what was to be”, nature more form than matter (“nature is more form than matter”) #

• Student: must a mover be a person? No: fire melts the butter.
• Student: why “what was to be”? Aristotle’s habit; since he began with the matter, “what was to be” is what comes at the end of the generation (from wood, a chair), though strictly the definition is of what is.
• Student asks him to expand on “nature is more form than matter”. Nature, by its definition, can be a cause in an active or a passive sense. The harassed mother and the inquisitive boy: why does the tree grow and not the stone, when soil, rain, sun and air are the same for both? “It is the nature of the tree to grow.” Not a complete answer, but not ignorance: since everything outside is the same, the cause must be within: nature in the active sense. Why does the log burn and the stone not, with the same flames licking both? “It is the nature of wood to burn”: something within by which it can be acted upon: nature in the passive sense.
• The passive sense of nature is that of matter, what is able to be formed and so acted upon; the active sense is form, a sign being that things cannot act this way or that until they have their form. Nature is that by which a natural thing is a natural thing, in the genus of substance, what is first in the thing; by matter it is a natural thing only in ability, by form actually; likewise wood is a chair only in potency and actually through its form, so art too is more form than matter. Therefore form is more nature than matter.

His words #

• aitia: Greek for cause, with the sense of being responsible.
• cause: what is responsible for the being or becoming (existence or coming into existence) of another, not of itself.
• effect: the other, which depends on the cause for its being or becoming.
• matter: that from which something comes to be, existing within it.
• lack: what a thing comes to be from without its remaining in it (the soft, for the hard) [ed.: privation].
• form: the account or definition of what was to be; also order, ratio, not only shape; logos = account.
• model: an extrinsic form that one imitates or copies, as against the intrinsic form.
• diapason: the octave, two to one.
• mover or maker: whence first there is a beginning of change or rest [ed.: efficient cause].
• nature: beginning and cause of motion and of rest in that which it is first as such, and not by happening.
• end: that for the sake of which [ed.: final cause].
• object: what specifies an act (color of seeing); a limit in a way, but not explicitly a kind of cause.
• ability: as in “by matter a natural thing only in ability” [ed.: potency].
• Wisdom, first and fifth books [ed.: Metaphysics I and V].
• Natural Hearing (heard as “actual hearing”) [ed.: Physics].

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics (Natural Hearing) II, the passage distinguishing the four causes, from the first paragraph through “the causes then are perhaps said in so many ways” (Reading 5); handout “Note for Word Cause”, p. 1 (verified); DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 561 (verified).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on this line (“said in so many ways”).
• Aristotle, Wisdom I (inferred: Metaphysics I) on Pythagoras and Plato; Wisdom V (inferred: Metaphysics V) on the meanings of end or limit.
• Plato, Phaedo, Socrates on Anaxagoras.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Hebrews, definition of faith (student’s reference); Thomas on the two meanings of end in the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Thomas Aquinas on studying body, soul, angels, God (no locus given).
• Hume’s discussion of cause and its influence on Kant.
• Fragments of the pre-Socratics seen earlier: poets, Thales, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras.

His questions #

• Why is “existing within it” necessary in the definition of matter? To separate matter from the lack or contrary, and also from the mover and from the whole.
• Why does Aristotle take his examples of matter from artificial things? Because we make them, so the matter is more known to us.
• Where does the example “two to one of the octave” come from? Pythagoras, who introduced form as a cause.
• What is the distinction between form and model? Form is intrinsic; the model is an extrinsic form one imitates or copies.
• Why “first” and “or rest” in the definition of the mover? “First” separates the mover from the matter; “rest” as in the definition of nature, things stop as well as start by nature.
• Why the father of the child rather than the mother? The mother is associated with matter; the father names the mover, as in Heraclitus and in calling God father.
• What is the end: getting rid of the headache, taking aspirin, buying it, or walking to the drugstore? All are ends in a series; the last is most of all the end.
• Is there a distinction between end and object? Yes; object does not explicitly name a kind of cause, though object and end may run together (God, seeing and color).
• Is there a reason for the order in which Aristotle distinguishes the causes? It is the historic order and the order in which reason is forced from the more known to the less known.
• Can a mover or maker be something that is not a person? Yes: fire melts the butter.