Design, Chance, and Randomness - Is There Teleology in Nature? - Book II of Aristotle's "Physics"

Is There Teleology in Nature? 

By Stephen Alexander Beach (1929 Words)

Introducing the Question

The Atomists in the Pre-Socratic era held that the design of nature could be attributed to the force of randomness in the interactions of the uncuttable particles in the void. In Book II of Aristotle's Physics he addresses the notion of luck and chance being actual causes of things in nature. He begins by introducing the question and pointing out that the Pre-Socratics, for the most part, didn't really address the notion of chance. Empedocles appealed to it when he ran out of explanations and [Of course the Atomists appealed to it], but none of the others really. Other contemporaries he criticizes because they hold contradictory views on the issue, claiming that the cosmos is random but that animals and humans are not, or vice versa. And so he wants to explore whether luck and chance, exist and to what extend they can be called causes of things. 

What is Luck? - Coincidence Which Takes the Place of Purpose in Human Actions

In exploring this question, Aristotle identifies three types of events. First, there is the even that happens in the same way all the time. [We could think here of the example of gravity. If you throw something up, it's going to come down.] Next, there are events which take place usually the same way, with a few exceptions. Both of these events are said to happen by purpose because either a human being is directing those actions with thought, or nature is directing them by her laws. But there is a third type of events which is coincidental and therefore attributed by people to luck. A coincidental event refers to an event which comes about for a purpose, though it was not intended by a person or by nature. When an event is intended on purpose or by nature, the connection, and causality is definite. Yet if an coincidental cause is the reason for a meaningful event coming about, the exact type of coincident is indeterminate because the options are so many. 

For example, Aristotle speaks about a person, A, owing another person, B, money. Person B one day goes to the market for his usual groceries, the intended outcome, but at the market he bumps into Person A and realizes that he should request his money, and gets paid. The coincidental cause was that of needing groceries, but it played a purposeful role in bringing about Person B getting his money. Therefore, not only was the coincidental cause indeterminate, as he could have gone to the market for any number of reasons, but it happens to take the place of a purposeful action, and thus is called luck. 

[Aristotle, and St. Thomas, consider not only things to have a hylomorphic unity of both form and matter, but actions or events as well. And so to express it in this way, one could say that an intended action is an action with a form (a definite purpose), as well as having coincidental, or accidentals, related to the matter, i.e. the instanton in reality of the intended purpose. When form and matter are united, it can result in realities which are not the intention of the form, or not directly related to the form, and as such are accidents. For example, whether I have blonde or brown hair does not change my identity as a person. Or whether or not I run over a squirrel as I drive home is accidental to the purpose of me driving home, and thus why we call it an accident when it happens.]

This all being said, some coincidental causes are closer to the achievement of the end than others, such as getting groceries was more of a cause of collecting the debt than having blonde hair was. "It is also correct to say that luck is contrary to reason. For rational judgment tells us what is always or usually the case, whereas luck is found in events that happen neither always nor usually. And so, since causes of this sort are indeterminate, luck is also indeterminate. Still, in some cases one might be puzzled about whether just any on thing might be a cause of a lucky outcome. Surely the wind or the suns warmth, but not someone's haircut, might be the cause of his health; for some coincidental causes are closer than other to what they cause." 

And so Aristotle says that we use the word "luck" when we speak of coincidental causes taking the place of purpose in human affairs. Good luck if the results are good and bad luck if the results are bad. If the outcome is big enough, he says that we tend to use the words good or bad fortune, though they are really the same. 

What is Chance? Coincidence Which Alters Nature's Usual Course

Moving to Aristotle's consideration of chance, he points out that luck is really a subset of chance which deals with rational agents which can purposefully choose things. Chance, though, is coincidental causality in a larger sense of also including events in animals and nature. When in nature something happens all the time or usually, and then some factor causes nature to be frustrated in its end, but rather something else takes place, then it is said to happen by chance. "Hence it is evident that among types of events that are for something (speaking without qualification), we say that a particular event of such a type results from chance if it has an external cause and the actual result is not what it is for...". "So also, then, an event happens by chance (as the name suggests) whenever it is pointless. For the stone did not fall in order to hit someone; it fell by chance, because it might have fallen because someone threw it to hit someone." 

With this understanding in mind, it brings us to an interesting conclusion. There is no such thing as pure randomness. Randomness is relative to a system or ordered rules, by definition, as it is only known in contrast to order. Pure randomness would be unintelligible as intelligibility comes through order and patterns. Chance, then, presupposes order, mind, and purpose. "Now nothing coincidental is prior to anything that is in its own right; hence clearly no coincidental cause is prior to something that is a cause in its own right. Chance and luck are therefore posterior to mind and nature. And so however true it might be that chance is the cause of the heavens, still it is necessary for mind and nature to be prior causes of this universe and of many other things." 

Does Nature Act by Design or by Chance?

Aristotle then turns to a discussion of nature as a whole. In what way is nature said to act for a purposeful or good end? Or does it not consider this, and simply act in accordance with its necessary laws, and if something good or bad happens, it is simply coincidental? Does the rain fall to make the grain grow, or to destroy the grain, or simply because what rises up into the sky is cooled and must fall down again? 

Here, Aristotle continues to ponder and describes a system which in so many ways looks like a proto version of Darwinian evolution. "Why not suppose, then, that the same is true of the parts of natural organisms? On this view, it is of necessity that, for example, the front teeth grow sharp and well adapted for biting, and the back ones broad and useful for chewing food; this useful result was coincidental, not what they were for. The same will be true of all the other parts that seem to be for something, these animals survived, since their constitution, though coming about by chance, made them suitable for survival. Other animals, however, were differently constituted and so were destroyed; indeed they are still being destroyed, as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves." 

Aristotle, though, rejects this idea of coincidence driving the design of nature because he does not believe that chance has the power to produce such things, as it is only by design that things come about consistently, not by chance. "This argument, then, and others like it, might puzzle someone. In fact, however, it is impossible for things to be like this. For these <teeth and other parts> and all natural things come to be as they do either always or usually, whereas no result of luck or chance comes to be either always or usually." In so many words, given that nature acts consistently for particular ends, it is true that design must govern the process as a whole with its laws and teleology, and chance must place a smaller part in this. Design is more fundamental than chance. 

Again, if the end of something is a positive or good end, and if in a sequence of combined actions towards that end all of the prior actions must be ordered toward the end to achieve it, then a consistent end implies the ordering of the preceding steps to that end, and we can say it is for that goal. "If, then, the products of a craft are for something, clearly the products of nature are also for something: for there is the same relation of later stages to earlier in productions of a craft and in productions of nature." He gives example of a plant working towards its flowering and sending roots down into the ground for nourishment instead of up in the air. 

And so it is by the form of things, what they consistent act for in their ends, that we can also tell when outliers take place, or when there is a defect in nature which produces something outside the norm. Thus we call things "natural" when they reach their usual end. Here's a good summary: "But whenever the end results always or usually, it is neither coincidental nor a result of luck. And in natural things that is how it is in every case, unless something prevents it. Besides, it is strange for people to think there is no end unless they see an agent initiating the motion by deliberation. Even crafts do no deliberate. Moreover, if the shipbuilding craft were in the wood, it would produce a ship in the same way that nature would. And so if what something is for is present in craft, it is also present in nature." In so many words, Aristotle is saying that, just as with man-made objects, we see a design but not the designer, so too with nature we see the consistent form and end without necessarily seeing the designer. 

To hammer this point home even more, Aristotle points out that necessity in nature is not the same as design. For example, by necessity in nature heavy things sink more and light things are easier to raise. And therefore, a house should come about on its own because the foundation of rock is the heaviest, the bricks, medium heavy, and the logs for the roof are the lightest. Of course not, while necessity is required in nature, it is not sufficient to explain the purpose and form which brings their to their end. 

This is where the four causes can help come into play. The necessity of laws in nature are more the material cause, providing the necessary building blocks for the formal cause to come in and design towards an end. 

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1 - Aristotle. The Physics. Book II