How well did Aristotles philosophy account for the causes of natural philosophy?
Well, Aristotle’s notion of the causes (which are correctly listed above, though ‘intentional’ and ‘effectuate’ causes are more commonly known as ‘efficient’ and ‘final’ respectively) worked well enough in terms of coherence with the rest of his system of thought, so it does fine on its own terms. However, we can evaluate his notion of causality by how much of it remains in contemporary philosophy. The short answer is that nobody uses this notion of causation anymore, though perhaps scientists would be better off making disctinctions between the kinds of causes that they postulate (in general, causation is a single category in modern science that doesn’t admit of internal disctinctions like Aristotle provides). Aristotle’s notion of causation as inherent in physical things is now passe, thanks almost exclusively to the work of David Hume on causality. The modern notion of causation is as a label provided for explanatory purposes, not a natural property to be explored.
