Sentence examples for formal causes from inspiring English sources

The most-celebrated account of teleology was that given by Aristotle when he declared that a full explanation of anything must consider its final cause as well as its efficient, material, and formal causes (the latter two being the stuff out of which a thing is made and the form or pattern of a thing, respectively).

(The conception of 'ideas' here, while clearly Platonic in origin, parallels Aristotelian formal causes).

Early modern thinking about causation began with a rejection of final and formal causes.

Leibniz's account of intrasubstantial causation therefore involves a tight connection between efficient, final, and formal causes.

In the Platonic view, however, the material and formal causes are only subservient or instrumental causes.

Emphasis on the importance of mechanisms is historically associated with the rejection of teleology and formal causes (e.g., Westfall 1971).

We must also understand our formal cause — what's distinctive about us in our evolved state.

We can understand the nature or kind of a phenomenon (formal cause), as when we define a cumulus cloud.

A postmortem conducted last week failed to establish a formal cause of Eva Rausing's death and an inquest into her death has been opened.

The police said the postmortem "did not establish a formal cause of death and we await the results of further toxicology reports".

As for formal cause, every science works with some notion of what kind of thing it studies — such as what an organism is, what an economy is, or what language is.