Aristotle's Physics - the Four Causes

Joel posted Is PowerPoint Anti-Intellectual? last month in which he claimed:

"If Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had had PowerPoint available, there might not have been any western philosophy handed down to us."

I replied:

"I'm not sure what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would have done with PowerPoint. I guess Socrates would have avoided it. Plato would have used it grudgingly, but Aristotle -OH! ARISTOTLE- he would have been (almost) as good as me!"

Well. that remark has cost me dozens of hours during which I have been researching Aristotle's books on Physics and Meteorology and building the PowerPoint charts I think he would have created had they been available in his time, some 2300 years ago. In particular, I tried to explain Aristotle's view of the Five Elements (Aether, Air, Fire, Earth, and Water) as well as his take on the Four Causes (Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final).

MY KNOLS ON THE FIVE ELEMENTS AND THE FOUR CAUSES

Once I made the PowerPoint charts I decided to go the extra step and use them to construct two new Google Knols. The first Knol, on the Five Elements was published last month, along with a related Topic on this Blog. The other Knol, on the Four Causes, is now available for your amazement.

Like me, you may find philosophy hard to understand. As my PhD advisor (Howard Pattee) told me, philosophers make simple things complex, using a language specially created for that purpose!

You may have heard about Aristotle's four causes: Material Cause, Formal Cause, Efficient Cause and Final Cause. I couldn't understand how the words "Formal" and Efficient" applied to causes - and neither would Aristotle if he lived today.

When we say, for example, "the housing crisis caused the stock market to dive" or "investors dumped their stocks because they wanted to preserve their capital" we imply a more or less direct relationship between the cause and the event or action. The Greek word for "cause" is "aition" and it is understood in a much wider sense, including both the immediate, direct causes as well as explanitory factors.

Thus what philosophers now call the Formal Cause should be understood as the form or pattern, the essence or archetype, that explains something. What they call the Efficient Cause is what we would call the direct or immediate cause of some event.

SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF THE FOUR CAUSES



I'll start with a simple, concrete example - how do building materials such as stone and wood end up becoming a house and furniture? What are all the causes and explanitory factors?





The chart at the head of this Topic shows how the Four Causes play into each other to accomplish this transformation.





The four charts that follow trace the effect of each of these causes in a step-by-step manner. See the Knol (Four Causes) for additional detail, verbatim quotations from Aristotle, and more.





In the Knol I also get into what Aristotle called spontaneity and chance as well as the fact he understood something like evolution and natural selection 2000 years before Charles Darwin - a feact Darwin himself acknowledges!

Ira Glickstein

Aristotle's Physics - the Five Elements

Joel posted Is PowerPoint Anti-Intellectual? earlier this month in which he claimed:

"If Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had had PowerPoint available, there might not have been any western philosophy handed down to us."

I replied:

"I'm not sure what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would have done with PowerPoint. I guess Socrates would have avoided it. Plato would have used it grudgingly, but Aristotle -OH! ARISTOTLE- he would have been (almost) as good as me!"

Well. that remark has cost me dozens of hours during which I have been researching Aristotle's books on Physics and Meteorology and building the PowerPoint charts I think he would have created had they been available in his time, some 2300 years ago. In particular, I tried to explain Aristotle's view of the Five Elements (Aether, Air, Fire, Earth, and Water) as well as his take on the Four Causes (Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final).

MY KNOL ON THE FIVE ELEMENTS

Once I made the PowerPoint charts I decided to go the extra step and use them to construct two new Google Knols. The first, on the Five Elements was published today and another, on the Four Causes, is under construction and will follow soon.

Like me, you may find philosophy hard to understand. As my PhD advisor (Howard Pattee) told me, philosophers make simple things complex, using a language specially created for that purpose!

You have undoubtedly heard about "the five elements" of the ancient philosophers. I couldn't understand how the ancients thought Fire was a basic element, or that the essence of Air was wet or of Water cold. It turns out they were not using these words according to the literal, narrow scientific meanings we employ. They were thinking about what we would now call the qualities of "energy" and "fluidity". They used Air, Fire, Water, and Earth as examples of things that had a lot or a little energy and/or fluidity.

Modern scientists dismiss the concept of Aether out of hand. However, the idea of a non-material substrate is important if we want to understand what the most intelligent and well-informed humans of two millenia ago were thinking. (If modern string theory, which says there are ten or eleven dimensions of which humans may comprehend only four, holds up to scientific examination, it may turn out that the six or seven "tightly curled up" dimensions we humans cannot comprehend might be what the ancients called the Aether!)

The graphic that appears at the head of this posting is the first chart and there are two others described in the Knol:

Have a look at the Five Elements Knol and please comment on it!

Ira Glickstein

Is PowerPoint Anti-Intellectual?

[from Joel] Generally speaking, I cringe when a speaker sets up for a PowerPoint presentation. The format used is generally that taught by the military: tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them. I find these presentations stultifying, suitable for learning how to disassemble a weapon or how to avoid a venereal disease, but not helpful in a subject requiring thinking. There are too many graphs and bullet points to allow the audience to formulate questions or objections. Unfortunately, scientific presentations have become powerpoint presentations in the past ten years. I happen to run across an interesting article on the web that documents my point of view. Y'all might find it interesting. If Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had had PowerPoint available, there might not have been any western philosophy handed down to us. Do we need to shoot the "messenger"? -Joel