Final causes

Final causes PDF Author: Paul Janet
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3385310946
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

On the Whole Doctrine of Final Causes

On the Whole Doctrine of Final Causes PDF Author: William Josiah Irons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description


The End of Final Causes in Biology

The End of Final Causes in Biology PDF Author: Lucas John Mix
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031140176
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This book provides a straightforward introduction to teleology in biology, the work it did and the work it can do. Informed by history and philosophy, it focuses on scientific concerns. Seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century biologists proposed a menagerie of biological “actors” to explain power without appealing to Aristotelian vegetable souls and final causes. Three constraints on teleology narrowed the field, selecting among the various actors as they mutated and recombined. Methodological naturalism, local adaptation, and blind chance each represent a significant philosophical advance in biology. Kant, Darwin, and the Modern Synthesis provided a new teleology, grounded in natural selection, an etiological recursion of form and function, and the details of carbon chemistry on Earth. They naturalized teleology, but they also finalized nature, shifting conceptions about the world and science. Understanding these links – historical, philosophical, and theoretical – sets the stage for new work moving forward.

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

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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 on Matter, Form, and Moving Causes

Aristotle on Matter, Form, and Moving Causes PDF Author: Devin Henry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108475574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Examines Aristotle's doctrine of hylomorphism and its importance for understanding the process by which substances come into being.

Formal Causes

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

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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 Science of Matter and Motion

Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion PDF Author: Christopher Byrne
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487503962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Although Aristotle's contribution to biology has long been recognized, there are many philosophers and historians of science who still hold that he was the great delayer of natural science, calling him the man who held up the Scientific Revolution by two thousand years. They argue that Aristotle never considered the nature of matter as such or the changes that perceptible objects undergo simply as physical objects; he only thought about the many different, specific natures found in perceptible objects. Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion focuses on refuting this misconception, arguing that Aristotle actually offered a systematic account of matter, motion, and the basic causal powers found in all physical objects. Author Christopher Byrne sheds lights on Aristotle's account of matter, revealing how Aristotle maintained that all perceptible objects are ultimately made from physical matter of one kind or another, accounting for their basic common features. For Aristotle, then, matter matters a great deal.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198751069
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book (Beta) of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book (Kappa). Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle setsout what he takes to be the main problems of metaphysics or 'first philosophy' and assesses possible solutions to them; he takes his starting-point from the work of earlier philosophers, especially Plato and some of the Presocratics. These texts serve as a useful introduction both to Aristotle's ownwork on metaphysics and to classical metaphysics in general; they are also a good example of Aristotle's dialectical method, which reasons not from known truths but from reputable opinions.

Real Essentialism

Real Essentialism PDF Author: David S. Oderberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134348851
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Real Essentialism presents a comprehensive defence of neo-Aristotelian essentialism. Do objects have essences? Must they be the kinds of things they are in spite of the changes they undergo? Can we know what things are really like – can we define and classify reality? Many if not most philosophers doubt this, influenced by centuries of empiricism, and by the anti-essentialism of Wittgenstein, Quine, Popper, and other thinkers. Real Essentialism reinvigorates the tradition of realist, essentialist metaphysics, defending the reality and knowability of essence, the possibility of objective, immutable definition, and its relevance to contemporary scientific and metaphysical issues such as whether essence transcends physics and chemistry, the essence of life, the nature of biological species, and the nature of the person.

A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things

A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things PDF Author: Robert Boyle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description