Physics
Physike Akroasis
Natural change and motion can only be understood through the four causes, material, formal, efficient, and final, and nature itself is best explained as things acting for the sake of an end rather than merely by mechanical necessity.
- the four causes (material, formal, efficient, final)
- change as actualization of potential
- refutation of Eleatic denial of motion
- teleology: nature acts for an end
- denial of the existence of void
Aristotle's Physics lays out the basic conceptual framework for studying nature (physis), defining natural things as those with an internal principle of change, and arguing that a complete explanation of a natural thing requires its four causes: the matter it is made of, the form organizing that matter, the efficient cause of the change, and the final cause, the end it serves. Aristotle devotes substantial argument to refuting the Eleatic denial of motion and plurality associated with Parmenides and Zeno, insisting that change is real once properly analyzed as the actualization of a potential already present in a thing, and works through place, void (which he argues cannot exist), infinity, and time, defined as the measure of motion according to before and after.
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