Evidently, Aristotle expects his reader to be already familiar with his general account of the four causes as well as his defense of final causality.
Some, like the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 1804), regarded biology's reliance on final causality as an indication of its inherent inferiority to sciences like physics.
Although it is not clear whether Aristotle thought of final causality as pertaining only to the domain of the living, it is certainly true that he considered it essential for understanding or explaining the nature of biological organisms.
Aristotle offers final causality as his explanation for this regular connection: the teeth grow in the way they do for biting and chewing food and this is good for the animal.
But this is not what Aristotle does in Physics II 8. Final causality is here introduced as the best explanation for an aspect of nature which otherwise would remain unexplained.
As noted above, Aristotle provided a metaphysical justification of teleological language in biology by introducing the notion of final causality, in which reference to what will exist in the future is used to explain what exists or is occurring now.
Despite these criticisms, the notion of final causality persisted in biology, leading many philosophers to think that, in this respect at least, the biological sciences would never be the same as the physical sciences.
More significant philosophically was Aristotle's view of causation, and particularly his identification of the notion of final causality, or causality with reference to some purpose, function, or goal (see teleology).
According to Aristotle, there are four sorts of causality, one of which is Final causality and another is Formal Causality.
Medieval positions on final causality were generally concerned, not just with final causality, but on how final and efficient causality were related to each other.
