Aristotle's Four Causes

Aristotle's Four Causes PDF Author: Boris Hennig
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781433159299
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines Aristotle's four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), offering a systematic discussion of the relation between form and matter, causation, taxonomy, and teleology. The overall aim is to show that the four causes form a system, so that the form of a natural thing relates to its matter as the final cause of a natural process relates to its efficient cause. Aristotle's Four Causes reaches two novel and distinctive conclusions. The first is that the formal cause or essence of a natural thing is not a property of this thing but a generic natural thing. The second is that the final cause of a process is not its purpose but the course that processes of its kind typically take.

Aristotle's Four Causes

Aristotle's Four Causes PDF Author: Boris Hennig
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781433159299
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines Aristotle's four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), offering a systematic discussion of the relation between form and matter, causation, taxonomy, and teleology. The overall aim is to show that the four causes form a system, so that the form of a natural thing relates to its matter as the final cause of a natural process relates to its efficient cause. Aristotle's Four Causes reaches two novel and distinctive conclusions. The first is that the formal cause or essence of a natural thing is not a property of this thing but a generic natural thing. The second is that the final cause of a process is not its purpose but the course that processes of its kind typically take.

Introduction to Aristotle

Introduction to Aristotle PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780394309736
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 667

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Introduction to Aristotle is a presentation in which Aristotle is permitted to speak for himself in the context of a sketched scheme of the relation of what he says in one treatise to what he says elsewhere. The seven introductions which precede these seven works place them in their contexts by describing their relations to other works or parts of works, their place in the scheme of the Aristotelian sciences, and the fashion in which the subjects treated in the sciences they expound may be considered in the approaches proper to other sciences in the system. - Preface.

Formal Causes

Formal Causes PDF Author: Michael T. Ferejohn
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019969530X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
Michael T. Ferejohn presents a new analysis of Aristotle's theory of explanation and scientific knowledge, in the context of its Socratic roots. Ferejohn shows how Aristotle resolves the tension between his commitment to the formal-case model of explanation and his recognition of the role of efficient causes in explaining natural phenomena.

Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda

Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda PDF Author: Michael Frede
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198237648
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 394

Get Book Here

Book Description
A distinguished group of scholars of ancient philosophy here presents a systematic study of the twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Lambda, which can be regarded as a self-standing treatise on substance, has been attracting particular attention in recent years, and was chosen as the focusof the fourteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, from which this volume derives. At the Symposium, each of Lambda's ten chapters was taken in turn as the subject of a session at which a specially written paper was read to and discussed by the assembled symposiasts. (The ninth chapter commanded twosessions by dint of its particular difficulty.) The papers have been revised in the light of discussion, and are now offered to a wider audience as a discursive commentary on points of particular philosophical interest covering all of Lambda. Michael Frede's extensive Introduction aims to give abroader view of Lambda as a whole and the problems it raises, and thus to provide the context for the discussion of each of the chapters. This volume will be a resource of great value and interest for anyone working on ancient metaphysics and theology.

Aristotle on Teleology

Aristotle on Teleology PDF Author: Monte Ransome Johnson
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191536504
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
Monte Johnson examines one of the most controversial aspects of Aristiotle's natural philosophy: his teleology. Is teleology about causation or explanation? Does it exclude or obviate mechanism, determinism, or materialism? Is it focused on the good of individual organisms, or is god or man the ultimate end of all processes and entities? Is teleology restricted to living things, or does it apply to the cosmos as a whole? Does it identify objectively existent causes in the world, or is it merely a heuristic for our understanding of other causal processes? Johnson argues that Aristotle's aporetic approach drives a middle course between these traditional oppositions, and avoids the dilemma, frequently urged against teleology, between backwards causation and anthropomorphism. Although these issues have been debated with extraordinary depth by Aristotle scholars, and touched upon by many in the wider philosophical and scientific community as well, there has been no comprehensive historical treatment of the issue. Aristotle is commonly considered the inventor of teleology, although the precise term originated in the eighteenth century. But if teleology means the use of ends and goals in natural science, then Aristotle was rather a critical innovator of teleological explanation. Teleological notions were widespread among his predecessors, but Aristotle rejected their conception of extrinsic causes such as mind or god as the primary causes for natural things. Aristotle's radical alternative was to assert nature itself as an internal principle of change and an end, and his teleological explanations focus on the intrinsic ends of natural substances - those ends that benefit the natural thing itself. Aristotle's use of ends was subsequently conflated with incompatible 'teleological' notions, including proofs for the existence of a providential or designer god, vitalism and animism, opposition to mechanism and non-teleological causation, and anthropocentrism. Johnson addresses these misconceptions through an elaboration of Aristotle's methodological statements, as well as an examination of the explanations actually offered in the scientific works.

Aristotle for Everybody

Aristotle for Everybody PDF Author: Mortimer J. Adler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439104913
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adler instructs the world in the "uncommon common sense" of Aristotelian logic, presenting Aristotle's understandings in a current, delightfully lucid way. Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) taught logic to Alexander the Great and, by virtue of his philosophical works, to every philosopher since, from Marcus Aurelius, to Thomas Aquinas, to Mortimer J. Adler. Now Adler instructs the world in the "uncommon common sense" of Aristotelian logic, presenting Aristotle's understandings in a current, delightfully lucid way. He brings Aristotle's work to an everyday level. By encouraging readers to think philosophically, Adler offers us a unique path to personal insights and understanding of intangibles, such as the difference between wants and needs, the proper way to pursue happiness, and the right plan for a good life.

The Modeling of Nature

The Modeling of Nature PDF Author: William A Wallace
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813208602
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Modeling of Nature provides an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of natural philosophy, psychology, logic, and epistemology.

Evil in Aristotle

Evil in Aristotle PDF Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107161975
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides the first full study of Aristotle's notion of evil and sheds light on its content, potential, and influence.

Aristotle's Physics

Aristotle's Physics PDF Author: Mariska Leunissen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703146X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume provides cutting-edge research on Aristotle's Physics, taking into account recent changes in the field of Aristotle.

Philosophical Biology in Aristotle's Parts of Animals

Philosophical Biology in Aristotle's Parts of Animals PDF Author: Jason A. Tipton
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319014218
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s Parts of Animals. It presents the wealth of information provided in the biological works of Aristotle and revisits the detailed natural history observations that inform, and in many ways penetrate, the philosophical argument. It raises the question of how easy it is to clearly distinguish between what some might describe as “merely” biological and the philosophical. It explores the notion and consequences of describing the activity in which Aristotle is engaged as philosophical biology. The book examines such questions as: do readers of Aristotle have in mind organisms like Ascidians or Holothurians when trying to understand Aristotle’s argument regarding plant-like animals? Do they need the phenomena in front of them to understand the terms of the philosophical argument in a richer way? The discussion of plant-like animals is important in Aristotle because of the question about the continuum between plant and animal life. Where does Aristotle draw the line? Plant-like animals bring this question into focus and demonstrate the indeterminacy of any potential solution to the division. This analysis of Parts of Animals shows that the study of the nature of the organic world was Aristotle’s way into such ontological problems as the relationship between matter and form, or form and function, or the heterogeneity of the many different kinds of being.​