Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle's Science of Nature

Abstract

In Aristotle's teleological view of the world, natural things come to be and are present for the sake of some function or end (for example, wings are present in birds for the sake of flying). Whereas much of recent scholarship has focused on uncovering the (meta-)physical underpinnings of Aristotle's teleology and its contrasts with his notions of chance and necessity, this book examines Aristotle's use of the theory of natural teleology in producing explanations of natural phenomena. Close analyses of Aristotle's natural treatises and his Posterior Analytics show what methods are used for the discovery of functions or ends that figure in teleological explanations, how these explanations are structured, and how well they work in making sense of phenomena. The book will be valuable for all who are interested in Aristotle's natural science, his philosophy of science, and his biology.

Functions in Basic Formal Ontology

“…Functions are ontologically challenging in that they are generally taken to involve a normative element: for a thing to have a function is for it to have something it is supposed to do and that it can do more or less well. There is a large and still growing literature on function (Buller, 1998;Wouters, 2005;Krohs and Kroes, 2009) and the topic has a long history documented for example by Gilson (1984) and Leunissen (2010). When approaching a complex issue of this sort it is therefore helpful to approach it with some basic ontological commitments already in place, and viewing the issue of function through the lens of an already developed and widely used top-level ontology is one effective way of doing this.…”

Heavenly Soul in Aristotle

“…The fifth passage is 2.3, 286a9-11, where Guthrie takes Aristotle to infer from the everlasting life of a god to its everlasting movement; but he might better be taken to infer (strictly speaking) that its movement is everlasting, i.e., he assumes here that such a god is in movement, given that from the beginning of the chapter the topic is the movements of celestial bodies (a3-4), while the premise that is taken from a9-11 in the following argument is indeed that the first heaven's movement is everlasting, so as to infer that it is circular (a11-13); thus the subject of the passage is implicitly only moving gods (gods whose life is expressed in movement), not excluding the existence of other kinds; Leggatt (1995), p. 277, pressing the reading τῷ θείῳ (a10, also adopted by Guthrie) argues less plausibly for a distinction between the god and the first heaven here and cf. partly similarly Leunissen (2010), p. 162 with n. 23. The final passage, 4.2, 309b17-19 argues against the atomists that the void would have to move upward itself if it were the cause of atoms moving up; Guthrie sug-…”

“…28 They are not in Guthrie's diagram (1939), p. 208 n. a, but they are in those of Leggatt (1995), pp. 247-8 andLeunissen (2010), p. 167.…”

“…247-8 andLeunissen (2010), p. 167 both present the earth as the analogue of plants; although cf. Leunissen (2010), p. 168, where he points out the disanalogy, in that the earth does not move, and also, contrary to his diagram, that the person who already has the good is not like the first heaven in the relevant respect, since the latter must move to attain the good: together these points suggest Leunissen has misaligned some elements in the schema. 30 On Aristotle's use of analogical reasoning here and elsewhere in De caelo see Leggatt (1995), pp.…”

Zoology

“…Explanations are couched predominantly in teleological terms, a concept that pervades PA 2-4, whose leitmotif is "nature does nothing in vain" (e.g., PA 658a36; GA: 741b4-5, 744b11-12; for aristotle on final causation, see Lennox 2001, 225-302;Gotthelf 2012, 3-150;Leunissen 2010). the general purpose of PA 2-4 and GA is to elucidate the "why"; why it is that some animals exhibit certain characteristics and not others, with respect, for example, to their constitutive parts or modes of reproduction.…”