ABSTRACT
From Aristotle to Bohr, there was general agreement that if a causal attribution is correct, then this explains why the effect in question took place. Aristotle was the first to defend the thesis that specifying a causal relation is a sufficient condition of scientific explanation. Aristotle viewed natural processes from two perspectives: as an imposition of form upon matter or as a transition from potentiality to actuality. Aristotle discussed four types of causal factors that are involved in a natural process: the form of its development (the formal cause), its material embodiment (the material cause), the agency responsible (the efficient cause), and the end achieved (the final cause). There were relatively few challenges to Aristotle's position on causation and scientific explanation until the time of Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Rene Descartes. Bacon maintained that the introduction of final causes for physical and biological phenomena serves only to promote verbal disputes that retard scientific progress.
