Aristotle's Four Causes In Science

Aristotle’s Four Causes in Science
Explanation is basic human nature. It began as a way to pass blame onto another person, then onto God or gods. This changed with the ideas of Archimedes of Syracuse. Archimedes was a mathematician, physicist, and inventor who was responsible for the discovery of buoyancy and the invention of both the siege engine and screw pump. After his discoveries, the popular view on explanation was modified. Instead of divine powers intervening in the world, people realized that natural objects and forces were the cause of certain occurrences. Aristotle, a philosopher and scientist, believed that there were four categories of explanation he called “causes.” The material cause is that from which something is made, the efficient cause is that by which something is made, the formal cause is that into which something is made, and the final cause is that for the sake of which something is made. Together, the answers to all four causes constituted “true knowledge.” According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, science is defined as the “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and …show more content…
The formal cause is that into which something is made, and the final cause is that for the sake or purpose of which something is made. The final cause, however, “need not be a purpose that someone has in mind” (Cohen). These causes are important to science as they represent the final product of any given reaction or occurrence. If the process of making the product goes wrong, the product might not perform the proper function in its environment and could turn out to be potentially fatal. For example, if a strand of RNA codes the wrong order of amino acids, a different protein may form. This can have negative effects because proteins have highly specific jobs, and if one is altered by even a little bit it may not perform its correct job, resulting in a dysfunctional