Description: An ancient philosophy blog by M.A.D. Moore
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One of the strangest opinions related in Aristotle, is the view he ascribes to Empedocles in Physics II.8. In context, Empedocles is invoked after Aristotle asks why we should not treat every natural occurrence like the rain, that is, as a process which does not occur for the sake of something, and applying this line of explanation to everything in nature, also say, for example, that teeth came to be in such a way as to be merely coincidentally felicitous for animal chewing. Of course, on the other hand
ὅπου μὲν οὖν ἅπαντα συνέβη ὥσπερ κἂν εἰ ἕνεκά του ἐγί- γνετο, ταῦτα μὲν ἐσώθη ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτομάτου συστάντα ἐπι- (30) τηδείως· ὅσα δὲ μὴ οὕτως, ἀπώλετο καὶ ἀπόλλυται, κα- θάπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς λέγει τὰ βουγενῆ ἀνδρόπρῳρα.
So when all turned out just as if they had come to be for something [ἕνεκά του, i.e., final cause], then the things, suitably constituted [συστάντα ἐπιτηδείως] as an automatic outcome, survived; when not, they died, and die, as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves. (Trans. Charlton, Physics II.8, 198b29-32).