True to Life
Tags:An anti-reductionist paper on the search for biological Truth entitled “True to Life”:
http://www.mcb.arizona.edu/hewlett/mjhusfpaper.html
“Have you every seen a child take apart a favorite toy? Did you then see the little one cry after realizing he could not put all the pieces back together? Well, here is a secret that never makes the headlines: We have taken apart the universe and have no idea how to put it back together.”
Aristotlean Causes: Simplified and in a Rosennean Perspective
Tags:http://www.panmere.com/?p=26#more-26
The four fashions:
1) The material aition is the raw material, the “heap” of matter without form.
2) The formal aition is the “logos of the essence”. It is the order (logos) which is in the process of being conveyed to the matter so as to give the matter form.
3) The efficient aition is the “primary source of change”. It is that which “brings about” a change in a thing (that is why it is called “primary”), “introducing” form to the matter. (The word ‘efficient’ is really a very poor label, but we are stuck with it, I’m afraid.)
4) The final aition is the form that is the striving toward the realization of an end form or “that for the sake of which” or telos. The aition is not the end itself, but, rather, the form in the present - that is what is “credited with” the eventual achievement of the end (barring unforeseen impediments to that achievement).