ABSTRACT

A common assertion in traditional historiography is the claim that an important aspect of the Scientific Revolution was the demise of Aristotelianism, which was characterized by a change in the concept of causality, a change which eliminated final causes from science. Two claims are embedded in this view: first, that natural philosophy completely abandoned Aristotelianism; and, second, that consequently final causes were eliminated from explanations of the natural world. Both of these claims must be seriously qualified. Close analysis of the thought of some of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution reveals that many aspects of Aristotelianism continued to play a role in seventeenth-century natural philosophy and, in particular, that many natural philosophers of the period believed that final causes have an important role in the explanation of natural phenomena.