For Aristotle, aitia covers the grounds that explain why something is as it is. It is broader than the modern search for an earlier event that triggered another event. Natural inquiry considers a changing thing’s constitution, coming-to-be, and completion.
The four causes organize this explanatory variety. Material cause concerns what something is made of; formal cause what it is; efficient cause the source of change; final cause what it is for. These answer different questions rather than offering four competing explanations of one kind.
A house’s materials, arrangement, builder, and purpose of shelter provide distinct accounts of the same object. Their common object does not make them interchangeable. In natural beings, an end should not automatically be treated as the intention of an external designer.
Equating this framework directly with contemporary physical causation obscures its scope. Aristotle’s inquiry also concerns the explanatory structure of knowledge: establishing that an event occurred differs from understanding why it occurred.