When teaching middle school, I often had reason to doubt Aristotle’s maxim, “all men by nature desire knowledge.” Generally, however, we do long to know things. Aristotle also claimed that to know a thing, we must identify its causes. In providing for the knowledge of a thing, Aristotle identified four causes. However, modern science only recognizes two of these and has thus impoverished our approach to the world. In order to fully grasp all that natural philosophy has to offer, we must recover all four of Aristotle’s causes.
These four causes are the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. Thomas Aquinas would expand on Aristotle’s thoughts by declaring that these are the only four causes which exist. The material cause describes the matter a thing is made of. Thus, a table has certain qualities when it is made of wood and others when it is made of plastic. If it were made of jelly, it would have still other qualities, quite unsuitable to the form.
The formal cause also contributes to a thing’s behavior. A table stands level because it has three to four legs of equal length. It would not function if it only had two legs but could stand with two trestle bases. The form of a thing is its essence. It is not only its arrangement or appearance, but innermost substance and being. The form of humanity is not merely the physical shape of the body, but, as Aristotle would claim, the soul is the form of the body. The soul—that essential aspect of humanity—is what makes a human a human, not merely having two legs and two arms.
The efficient cause is perhaps the easiest to grasp. It is the cause that produces a direct effect, such as the artist painting a canvas or a craftsman sawing and shaping wood into a desk. The efficient cause shapes the matter into a form. This is how we most commonly use the word “cause.”
Finally, we have the final cause. The final cause regards the end or purpose of a thing, denoted by the Greek word, telos, translated as “end,” “final goal,” or “purpose.” A telos also exhibits gravity on an object. An acorn is meant to become an oak tree; that is its purpose and telos. It acts the way it does because of that purpose. A runner’s telos is both to finish the race and to run; this is what drives and pushes him through the task of running. A dining table has the purpose of supporting food for dining. A sloped table, while having the right matter, form, and crafted by an agent, would not serve the purpose well. It would fail in its final cause. Aristotle stressed that to know things as they are, we must attend to all four of these causes.
If you notice, there is a progression to these causes. The craftsman works towards a certain purpose or end, and so he shapes the matter into a fit form. Thus, the matter is perfected by form, the form is perfected by an agent, and the agent works towards a telos. For this reason, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas named the final cause as the “cause of causes.” This is the thing that all other causes aim towards.
Aristotle’s fourfold causation allows us to understand why things act the way they do from a variety of angles. As with history, we ought to avoid monocausal explanations of phenomena. We may distort the truth not only by explicit falsehood, but also by omitting necessary aspects of the truth. We do not have full knowledge of a thing until we grasp all four of its causes.
However, modern science has rejected two of these four causes. A major influence in this rejection was Francis Bacon (1561-1627). He stood at the headwaters of the Enlightenment and was notable for his reduction of human knowledge. Francis Bacon abandoned two of Aristotle’s four causes, leaving only the material and efficient cause. The form or end of a thing is irrelevant. By abandoning the four causes, he narrowed the scope of the natural philosophy to mere matter and mover.
This marks the birth of empiricism where nothing transcendent or eternal remains. There are no ideals; nothing beyond our senses. The world is just stuff and we are all wrestling the same lump of Play-Doh to make it into our image. You say that this is what a man or woman is; I say we make our own concepts of manhood or womanhood. We will see who proves the stronger. There is no order or direction to the universe, only what is. Evolution is simply the process by which one lump of stuff turns into another lump of stuff. We are left to supply our own meaning.
This may appear to be power, but without a telos or end, we are adrift in the void. A ship cannot progress if there is no destination. A craftsman cannot form a table or chair without some end or purpose in mind. If animals do not have a telos towards which they aim, they are nothing more than matter in motion. It is sometimes asserted that the ancients had a flat universe and we discovered the round world, but the medievals had a three-dimensional cosmos with hierarchy, depth, and order; ours is sterile space with no up or down, forward or back. Morality cannot exist in such a vacuum. After all, what is a human being but a collection of chemicals fizzing? There is no shape or form to man; no purpose for which he aims. He is a bath bomb in the ocean of the world; watch him bubble.
Modern science has followed in the footsteps of Francis Bacon and discarded the formal and final causes. With no proper form or ideal to nature, the world becomes infinitely malleable. There is no ought to the world, only what it is and what we can make it. Current experiments with cybernetic implants and genetic manipulation seek to transgress the boundaries of humanity and make it something other than what it is. If you cannot say what a human is, you are free to manipulate the matter in whatever way you please. This goes beyond accidental things like hair or eye color to adding scales, claws, extra eyelids, AI-implants, or other animal/digital features. Who is to say what a human is?
This science has spurred technological innovation by describing the material properties and the means by which this matter may be manipulated. What is technology but the movement of matter through mechanical means? So we have seen great technological breakthroughs with no apparent brakes, which often breaks things. It is only later that the philosophers and humanists try to squeeze the genie back in his bottle.
Yet when we treat the world in this way, we lose an important aspect of reality. Science can only provide partial truths because it does not consider form or end. We err when we claim that what a thing is made of is the really important fact of its existence. There is a great difference between the water in a human body and the water on the ocean. As C.S. Lewis describes in the Abolition of Man, the moment we lost the mythos of the forest dryads and river nymphs is when we began to look on these things as raw materials to be exploited. We do not consider the tree or horse as whole substances, but merely the sum of various parts. Knowledge only comes through dissection and dismemberment.
A horse is not merely a thing composed of flesh, bone, and hair containing various organs and systems. If you were to separate all of these things on a table, you would no longer have a horse. The matter itself is not what makes a thing what it is, but the entire form of it hanging together. Treating the formal cause as a reason for a thing’s being forces us to consider things as wholes. Eastern medicine has long noticed things that Western medicine fails to perceive because it considers the body as a unified organism. There are pathways and connections that remain hidden to one insistent on separating parts.
Without a telos or goal to aim at, science will produce horrors and monstrosities. It must be restrained by nature as a guide. Transgenderism, the failure to recognize either form or telos to manhood and womanhood, destroys the human person. It is why its advocates cannot differentiate between destroying healthy bodily function through castration and restoring faulty function through Lasik or corrective lenses.
The telos of the world constrains and directs our use of technology to manipulate the world. Tolkien highlights this contrast in his descriptions of Elven magic versus that of Saruman. The Elves use their magic and skill to cultivate things into their full expression. We picture full and flowering gardens, architecture woven into nature, and a harmonious atmosphere. The beeping and banging of a construction site would be out of place. Saruman, however, has a mind of metal and wheels. He uses his magic and technology to manipulate the environment to serve his own ends, no matter the destruction he causes. There is only matter and mover—trees serve whatever purpose he pleases.
The cause should help us consider the technologies we admit into our lives.
This cause should help us consider the technologies we admit into our lives. Do we really need to be constantly entertained with a personal soundtrack through noise-isolating earbuds? Perhaps we should learn to use a chisel or hand plane instead of resorting to the flesh-devouring router. Machines demand sacrifice, whether lost fingers, choking lungs, or simple payment in blood. When we tend to animals, are we helping them reach their full maturity and potential, or deliberately altering their nature in order to serve our own ends?
If we are to understand and live in this world rightly, we must recover all of Aristotle’s four causes. These teach us to look for form of a thing as well as its raw materials. The final cause governs all the rest of the causes; it provides the reason for which we exist. Without the final cause, we cannot recite question one of the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?” Thankfully, we have a purpose in this life and so can affirm, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” And as Virgil said, “Happy are those who know the causes of things.”
Image Credit: Joseph Wright of Derby, “Philosopher giving a lecture on the orrery” (c. 1768) via GetArchive
