Before DarwinBefore Darwin

Aristotle: Opening of Aristotle: Opening of MetaphysicsMetaphysics

"ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Wisdom Must Go Beyond SensesWisdom Must Go Beyond Senses

“…we do not regard any of the senses as Wisdom; yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the 'why' of anything-e.g. why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot.”

Each Subject, Different Degree of PrecisionEach Subject, Different Degree of Precision

“Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. . . . for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

Aristotle, Ethics, Book 1, sect. 3

Four CausesFour Causes

• Material cause

• Formal cause

• Efficient cause

• Final cause

Four CausesFour Causes

• Material cause: the stuff it’s made of• Formal cause: its essence• Efficient cause: what made it occur• Final cause: its end, goal, or purpose

Formal and final causes closely related, as the eidos of a thing

Why Am I Here?Why Am I Here?

• Material cause: cells and organs of my body

• Formal cause: “human nature”; essence, soul as “form of the body”[some suggest “genetic program” as modern equivalent; e.g., Mayr, p. 56]

• Efficient cause: parents’ sexual reproduction, etc.

• Final cause: the natural end or goal of a human life, to fulfill the purpose of being human, to make actual my potential, to flourish, to achieve the excellence appropriate and natural to humans

Why Does This Acorn Exist?Why Does This Acorn Exist?

• Material cause: organic matter that makes up the acorn

• Formal cause: the essence of an acorn

• Efficient cause: events leading to creation of acorns

• Final cause: to become an oak treeto become an oak tree

Why Are There Cats?Why Are There Cats?

• Material cause: cells and organs that make up the cat

• Formal cause: the essence of felinity or “catness”

• Efficient cause: sexual reproduction of parents; development as embryo

• Final cause: to achieve the natural end of cats (?)

ObjectionObjection

A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.

Aristotle’s ResponseAristotle’s Response

Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog-days, but only if we have it in winter.

If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due to nature even the champions of the theory which is before us would agree. Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.

Is Aristotle Teleological?Is Aristotle Teleological?

• Sure sounds like it

• But Eidos in Aristotle may not be like immaterial soul of Plato

• Alternative is not something in the future but actual “tendencies” inherent in the thing itself

• Trajectory or something like a genetic program.

PaleyPaley

• If we found a watch, we could conclude there must be a watchmaker

• Watch shows order in relation to an end; design.• “There cannot be design without a designer.”• This would be our inference even if [not in your selection]

– Sometimes the watch “went wrong”– There were parts of the watch with no obvious relation

to the end

• If the watch could reproduce, this would increase our assurance that it is designed

Argument from analogyArgument from analogy• The natural world shows similar signs of

design, so there must be a designer• Example of the EYE

– More intricate and ordered than telescope– Even eye of fish and land animals differ in

ways that help vision in each environment

• Much discussion in Darwinist literature about evolution of eye– Challengers: intermediate forms would not be

useful– Response: primitive light-sensing forms, etc.