Abstract
Aristotle supposes that powers are producers of change: when correlate agent-patient powers are in suitable contact over some period they are activated, so that changing occurs during this period within the patient. I show how this view fits well with contemporary science, where the focus is often on configurations of features with powers (i.e. nomological machines or mechanisms): we may suppose that such a configuration gives rise to the exercising of certain powers at each stage, and hence to changing of that configuration – over time to a process of change.
These processes of change to which powers give rise may be taken ontologically seriously, I argue - they link the configuration of features at each stage of the process to the change that can then occur: the process-configuration has the power to give rise to the change process which follows, together with its attendant features, we may say. Often we ascribe powers to individual features of such process-configurations derivatively: an aspirin has the power to cure a headache, we suppose, just because it may be swallowed by a person with a headache, and under those circumstances a process of change may occur which results in the cessation of that headache. Such processes, process-configurations and powers are closely ontologically related, as is their emergence.
This view seems to contrast with popular contemporary accounts of powers in which the compresence of sets of powers, perhaps mutual manifestation partners, gives rise to some new state, perhaps some new set of powers.