In Aristotle's Metaphysics, there are four main causes of change in nature: the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. Each of these "causes" was a different sense of the Greek word aition, which Aristotle thought was ambiguous and needed to be clarified. Only one of the four "causes" (the efficient cause) approximates the concept expressed by the English word cause as it is normally used today.

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  • In Aristotle's Metaphysics, there are four main causes of change in nature: the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. Each of these "causes" was a different sense of the Greek word aition, which Aristotle thought was ambiguous and needed to be clarified. Only one of the four "causes" (the efficient cause) approximates the concept expressed by the English word cause as it is normally used today. It has been suggested that an English word of parallel ambiguity is the verb "make". Thus the Greek "x is the aition of y" can be rendered in English "x makes a y". In the case of material cause, we could say "wood makes up a table" or in the case of a car, we could say "steel and rubber make up a car". In Aristotle's own words:
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  • "Cause" means: (a) in one sense, that as the result of whose presence something comes into being—e.g. the bronze of a statue and the silver of a cup, and the classes for which contain these; (b) in another sense, the form or pattern; that is, the essential formula and the classes which contain it—e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general is the cause of the octave—and the parts of the formula.(c) The source of the first beginning of change or rest; e.g. the man who plans is a cause, and the father is the cause of the child, and in general that which produces is the cause of that which is produced, and that which changes of that which is changed. (d) The same as "end"; i.e. the final cause; e.g., as the "end" of walking is health.For why does a man walk? "To be healthy," we say, and by saying this we consider that we have supplied the cause. (e) All those means towards the end which arise at the instigation of something else, as, e.g. fat-reducing, purging, drugs and instruments are causes of health; for they all have the end as their object, although they differ from each other as being some instruments, others actions.
  • Metaphysics 1013a, translated by Hugh Tredennick
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  • In Aristotle's Metaphysics, there are four main causes of change in nature: the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. Each of these "causes" was a different sense of the Greek word aition, which Aristotle thought was ambiguous and needed to be clarified. Only one of the four "causes" (the efficient cause) approximates the concept expressed by the English word cause as it is normally used today.
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  • Four causes
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