In Theory and History, Chapter 11, Mises discusses the two kinds of causation resorted to by man. First he declares:
“The natural sciences do not know anything about final causes;”
“Final cause” is Aristotelean terminology for a purpose or end; or as Aristotle put it, “that for the sake of which a thing is done”. Mises goes on:
“inquiry and theorizing are entirely guided by the category of causality.”
By “causality”, Mises does not seem to mean causation in general, but specifically mechanistic causation: what Aristotle termed “the efficient cause”. (Mises’ somewhat curious use of “causality” is discussed by Mises Forum members here.)
“The field of the sciences of human action is the orbit of purpose and of conscious aiming at ends; it is teleological.”
The term “teleology” is derived from the Greek word for a final cause (purpose, end, goal, or aim): telos.
“Both categories were resorted to by primitive man and are resorted to today by everybody in daily thinking and acting. The most simple skills and techniques imply knowledge gathered by rudimentary research into causality. Where people did not know how to seek the relation of cause and effect, they looked for a teleological interpretation. They invented deities and devils to whose purposeful action certain phenomena were ascribed. A god emitted lightning and thunder. Another god, angry about some acts of men, killed the offenders by shooting arrows.” (Emphasis added.)
In writing this last sentence, Mises, a classically trained scholar, was very likely thinking of Apollo’s vengeance on the Greek army in Homer’s Iliad, recounted in my last post.
The worldview Mises describes above is that of the kind of thinker Aristotle called the theologos.
For the ancient Greek theologos, the sun is a blazing chariot being actively driven by the god Helios, earthquakes are the manifestation of Poseidon’s wrath, agricultural seasons come and go according to the mood of Demeter. Even human emotional states are explained by the influence of gods like Aphrodite and Eris, goddess of strife.
Sometimes such individual acts of god are constituent parts of a greater plan. The events leading up to the fall of Troy are said, by Homer, to have occurred in fulfillment of the will of Zeus.
Dios d’ eteleieto boulê
(thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfillment)
But, even Zeus is said to be bound by the Moirae (the apportioners, or Fates) and their mother Ananke (Destiny or Necessity).
In the above examples, things in the universe are controlled by gods which were separate from that which they controlled. But in many cases in mythology, the things are gods themselves. For example, in one of more action-packed scenes in the Iliad, the river Xanthus itself is represented as a god who engages in one-on-one combat with Vulcan, god of the forge. The river gets the worst of it, as he is pretty thoroughly torched by the Olympian:
Then he turned tongues of fire on to the river. He burned the elms the willows and the tamarisks, the lotus also, with the rushes and marshy herbage that grew abundantly by the banks of the river. The eels and fishes that go darting about everywhere in the water, these, too, were sorely harassed by the flames that cunning Vulcan had kindled, and the river himself was scalded, so that he spoke saying, “Vulcan, there is no god can hold his own against you. I cannot fight you when you flare out your flames in this way; strive with me no longer….
He was boiling as he spoke, and all his waters were seething.
This particular kind of teleological interpretation of material phenomena is called “animism”, which Mises discusses in Human Action, chapter 1, section 6:
Both primitive man and the infant, in a naive anthropomorphic attitude, consider it quite plausible that every change and event is the outcome of the action of a being acting in the same way as they themselves do. They believe that animals, plants, mountains, rivers, and fountains, even stones and celestial bodies, are, like themselves, feeling, willing, and acting beings. Only at a later stage of cultural development does man renounce these animistic ideas and substitute the mechanistic world view for them.
According to the teleological cosmology of the most thoroughgoing theologos, , the universe is suffused with purpose, since all phenomena are at bottom actions in the Misesian sense: purposeful behavior.
This post is one in a series entitled A Misesian Perspective on the History of Thought
