The Material Cause, that out of which the statue is made, is the marble or bronze. The material cause implies the capacity of existence to reside in the substance of the material of which the universe is made. Most scientific inquiry involves that concept, thus ignores the formal cause, touches on the efficient cause, and denies the final cause. Some scientific discussion does imply a teleological cause in biology by suggesting that organisms seek to propagate themselves as a condition of their genome. Survival of the fittest implies a teleological cause or desire to improve future generations.
Formal causes are the changeless essences of things in themselves, permanent in them amid the flux of accidental modifications, yet by actual union with the materialcause determining this to the concrete individual; and not, like the ideas of Plato, separated from it.
With certain important modifications concerning the eternity of the materialcause, the substantiality of certain formal causes of material entities, and the determination of the final cause, the fourfold division was handed on to the Christian teachers of patristic and scholastic times.
While the materialcause of corporeal entities is one, in the sense that it is one indeterminate potentiality, the formal cause is said to be one in the sense that one substantial formal cause only can exist in each effect, or result, of the union of form and matter.
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