Bringing home the bacon
January 17, 2008 · By Marsilio Facino
The Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson vigorously contended in his 1971 book From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again that Francis Bacon and others perpetrated a philosophical error when they eliminated two of Aristotle’s four causes from the purview of science. They sought to explain everything in mechanistic terms, referring only to material and efficient causes and discarding formal and final causality.
That’s from the previously mentioned article God and Evolution by Cardinal Avery Dulles. For those who can provide a philosophical reason for this philosophical change, have at it in the comments. For those looking for some homework help for their assignment, here’s a link to Aristotle on Causality at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
Vae victus.
I tried to compose a reply but it’s late and this link provides a more intelligible answer to your question than I could anyway.
http://www.mathpages.com/home/.....ath581.htm
Francis Bacon did not accept (quite the opposite) that physical explanation by use of efficient and material causes are therefore ‘mechanical’. He explicitly deployed a range of non-mechanical ‘forces’ more akin to Aristotelian or Galenic ‘Attraction’ (and the like) than the Cardinal (or Gilson) seems aware of. A read of Novum Organum Book 2 will disbuse you of this canard.