| Our curiosity about things takes different forms, as Aristotle noted at the dawn of human science. His pioneering effort to classify them still makes a lot of sense. He identified four basic questions we might want answered about anything, and called their answers the four aitia, a truly untranslatable Greek term traditionally but awkwardly translated as the four "causes." (1) We may be curious about what something is made of, its matter or material cause. (2) We may be curious about the form (or structure or shape) that that matter takes, its formal cause. (3) We may be curious about its beginning, how it got started, or its efficient cause. (4) We may be curious about its purpose or goal or end (as in "Do the ends justify the means"), which Aristotle called its telos, sometimes translated in English, awkwardly, as "final cause." It takes some pinching and shoving to make these four Aristotelian aitia line up as the answers to the standard English questions "what, where, when, and why." The fit is only fitfully good. Questions beginning with "why," however, do standardly ask for Aristotle's fourth "cause," the telos of a thing. Why this? — we ask. What is it for? As the French say, what is its raison d'etre, or reason for being? For hundreds of years, these "why" questions have been recognized as problematic by philosophers and scientists, so distinct that the topic they raise deserves a name: teleology. A teleological explanation is one that explains the existence or occurrence of something by citing a goal or purpose that is served by the thing. Artifacts are the most obvious cases; the goal or purpose of an artifact is the function it was designed to serve by its creator. There is no controversy about the telos of a hammer: it is for hammering in and pulling out nails. The telos of more complicated artifacts, such as camcorders or tow trucks or CT scanners, is if anything more obvious. But even in simple cases, a problem can be seen to loom in the background: "Why are you sawing that board?" "To make a door." "And what is the door for?" "To secure my house." "And why do you want a secure house?" "So I can sleep nights." "And why do you want to sleep nights?" "Go run along and stop asking such silly questions." This exchange reveals one of the troubles with teleology: where does it all stop? What final final cause can be cited to bring this hierarchy of reasons to a close? Aristotle had an answer: God, the Prime Mover, the for-which to end all for-whiches. The idea, which is taken up by the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions, is that all our purposes are ultimately God's purposes. The idea is certainly natural and attractive. If we look at a pocket watch and wonder why it has a clear glass crystal on its face, the answer obviously harks back to the needs and desires of the users of watches, who want to tell time, by looking at the hands through the transparent, protective glass, and so forth. If it weren't for these facts about us, for whom the watch was created, there would be no explanation of the "why" of its crystal. If the universe was created by God, for God's purposes, then all the purposes we can find in it must ultimately be due to God's purposes. But what are God's purposes? That is something of a mystery. | — Daniel C Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Chapter One - Tell Me Why | Indexes/03 |
1 comments:
We curious thing, in different forms, as Aristotle pointed out that the threshold of the Human Science.
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