Category — Platonic

Metaphysics, Book 1, § 3

According to Aristotle, to know is to know first causes. This is real knowledge. He lists the four causes (aitia). (His idea is also explained in Physics, Book 2, § 3)
1. The being and essence of a thing; what it is for a thing to be what it is. The silver in a cup or the bronze in a statue are the essence of the thing (material cause). This “cause” leads us to differentiate between the objects of our temporal horizon. [physical aspect]

2. The form or pattern. This exists in an analogous relationship to the thing. Aristotle uses the example of the ratio 2:1 as the form of the octave in music. It seems that this descriptive form is the one step toward the “idea” and the language we employ to describe the thing; it is a step towards abstraction, as the first cause is a step toward differentiation. It seems to me to be a mediated cause. It can exist in the mind of the maker or shaper of things (formal cause). [formative aspect- culture, history, deliberate shaping as well as biotic aspect] Once the form is applied to the thing, for example, the rubber and steel are combined to make a tyre, the form becomes intrinsic. Or, once the egg and sperm meet, the form of a person emerges. 

3. The source of movement. Movement is ambiguous, a better term is change; as this entails not just a spacial idea but also the decay and regeneration we see all around us. There are four types of motion (kinêsis): substantial; qualitative; quantitative and spacial. [biotic aspect; as well as kinematic]

4. The teleological or final cause. This is the reason why a thing exists, the purpose it serves. This is the goal of all generation and movement. This is the foundation of Aristotle’s ethics. Everything that exists, exists for a “good” purpose. [ethical aspect]

First thoughts:
In each of the four the cause is intrinsic to the thing. This is where Aristotle departs from Plato, who asserted the existence of forms as a transcendent entities. Aristotle goes so far as to suggest that the form exists in the mind of the maker of the thing, but the mind too is a material within his schema. He critiques Plato’s views in §9 of the Metaphysics through a reductio argument. Immanence is one of the key factors in the Aristotelean system; everything we know as well as how we know is determined by the context of our temporal existence. 

Aristotle implies a hierarchy, with Matter as the dominate cause. This stands in direct contradiction to Plato who placed the Forms at the top. However, despite the ordering of the two poles, both men agreed that Matter, Form, Change and Telos make up the totality of our existence. Each man simply assumed the absolute nature of the one pole or the other.