The Four Causes

How can we determine why something occurs? This is a summary of the four causes proposed by Aristotle to answer the “why” question. A more detailed exploration is available in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

For Aristotle, every change has a cause. He saw four different kinds of causes for any change:

• Material cause
  • “That out of which”
  • The input for the change
• Formal cause
  • “The account of what-it-is-to-be”
  • The final form the of the result of the change
• Efficient case
  • “The primary source of the change”
  • The actor which makes the change happen
• Final cause
  • “The end”
  • The reason why the change takes place