Nature, Social Systems and Collective Causality

Abstract

In his Physics, Aristotle (1930, 194b, 195a and b) introduced a conception of causality that exerted decisive influence on Western thought. He defined it as the ‘why’ of things, the primary cause of ‘coming into being’ and ‘passing away’ of a given phenomenon. Aristotle listed the distinct types of causality as (1) ‘that out of which a thing comes to be and persists — as the bronze of the statue, or the silver of the bowl — its material ‘substratum’; (2) that which derives from the universal ‘form’ or the ‘archetype’ of the thing, its ‘essence’, which logically pre-exists it; (3) that which consists in the ‘primary source of the change or coming to rest’ — ‘what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed’; and (4) that which appears as finality, implying the ‘end’ of the phenomenon under consideration, or ‘that for the sake of which a thing is done’ (when it is an ‘activity’ or ‘instrument’). The social sciences have translated in varied forms these definitions, which have also been found in later developments of Western philosophy.