THE FOUR CAUSES

1. What kind of thing is it? (formal cause)

2. What is it made of? (material cause)

3. What brought it about? (efficient cause)

4. What is it for? (the "final" cause)

WRITINGS OF ISAAC NEWTON

An Atheist will allow that there is a Being absolutely perfect, necessarily existing & the author of mankind & call it Nature... [he] will tell you further that the Author of mankind was destitute of wisdome & designe because there are no final causes & and that matter is space & therefore necessarily existing & having always the same quantity of motion, would in infinite time run through all variety of forms one of which is that of man.

The six primary planets revolve about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, with the same direction of motion, and very nearly in the same plane. Ten moons revolve about the earth, Jupiter, and Saturn in concentric circles, with the same direction of motion, very nearly in the planes of the orbits of the planets. And all these regular motions do not have their origin in mechanical causes, since comets go freely in very eccentric orbits and into all parts of the heavens. And with this kind of motion the comets pass very swiftly and very easily through the orbits of the planets; and in their aphelia, where they are slower and spend a longer time, they are at the greatest possible distance from one another, so as to attract one another as little as possible.

This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of similar systems, they will all be constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of One, especially since the light of the fixed starts is of the same nature as the light of the sun, and all the systems send light into all the others. And so that the systems of the fixed stars will not fall upon one another as a result of their gravity, he has placed them at immense distances from one another.