THE LUNAR ECLIPSE:  

As discussed in Part — II, Aristotle proposed FOUR kinds of cause behind the occurrence of a  natural process — Material, Formal (Formative), Efficient and Final.  

To explain how these causes operate, examples of the ‘production of a bronze statue’ and the  ‘growth of a plant’ were provided.  

One of the questions, raised at the end of the article, was on the implication of the Aristotelian  Causality — on the explanation for the occurrence of any natural process: Do ALL these four  causes necessarily operate for the occurrence of EVERY natural process?  

No, not necessary!  

Firstly, Aristotelian Causality can be said to imply a world-view in which an explanation for the  occurrence of a natural process may involve UP TO four kinds of cause.  

Secondly, the Aristotelian approach to causality seems to be focussing not only on the ‘kinds’ of  cause (relevant in a natural process) but also on their ‘most precise description’.  

These points can be clarified by analyzing, for example, the phenomenon of ‘Lunar Eclipse’.  

Let’s check whether the first pair of causes — Material and Formal (Formative) — is operational or  not. These two kinds of cause are said to represent the inseparable “potentiality-actuality” pair:  ‘matter’ as the potentiality — actualized by the ‘form’.  

In the case of lunar eclipse the subject affected by the eclipse is, obviously, the moon — still, strictly  speaking it cannot be taken as the ‘material or matter’ cause behind the eclipse. For it simply  ‘undergoes’ an eclipse due to the earth’s interposition between the moon and the sun.  

Consequently, there is no question of ‘formal’ (formative) cause in this context.  How about the second pair of causes — Efficient and Final?  

As the ‘most precise description’ of causes, the earth — from the Aristotelian perspective — is taken  as the ‘proximate’ efficient cause of the eclipse.  

And, there is nothing that can represent the ‘Final’ cause — the earth is not coming in between the  moon and the sun for the eclipse to happen.  

That’s all! It can be easily seen that the ‘full causal’ explanation of eclipse doesn’t involve any  reference to the other three kinds of causes (material, formative and final). Also, it adds an  adjective — ‘proximate’ — to the efficient cause (i.e. the earth) — for more precise description.  

Okay, let us tentatively keep aside this ancient (Aristotelian) viewpoint of causal connectedness and  consider the other question raised at the end of Part — II.  

It was on making the notion of ‘causality’ more general and modern — not restricting it only to the  ‘WHY’ question, but also interpreting it as involving the answers to the ‘WHAT’, ‘HOW’ and  ‘WHERE-WHEN’ questions to more completely comprehend the ‘causal-connectedness’ —  

favouring & allowing the occurrence of certain natural processes and forbidding it for some  others. 

It can be argued that — the process of generalizing the notion of causality in this way represents the  way the ancient field of ‘natural philosophy’ underwent scientific revolution and emerged & evolved  recently (from 16th century onwards…) as the ‘natural science’ — with its most fundamental  frameworks provided by Physics — representing answers to the superset of questions (what, how 

why and where-when).  

One of the key tenets that took birth in this evolution is the tenet of ‘determinism’.  

Revisiting the example of ‘lunar eclipse’, today we not only know WHY it occurs, but also we can  go ahead and ask: WHEN is the next lunar eclipse and WHERE will be the earth and the moon  located with reference to the sun at the time of eclipse & so on… — and we get the answers.  

(For your information — the next lunar eclipse is from November 29 to 30, 2020. You can google  for more details.) 

This is determinism — given the initial state (say, the position) of objects (e.g. the earth and the  moon), their final state (positions) can be ‘determined’ — and hence, eclipses can be ‘predicted’.  

As mentioned in some of the previous articles, such causal determinations and predictions require  — a) certain assumptions pertaining to the geometry of spacetime (where-when questions) and b)  the expressions of the relevant law(s) of nature (how-why questions).  

Thanks to — Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes,  and of course, Sir Issac Newton!  

Exploration continues… 

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