The Physics constitutes a fruitful starting point for our study of Aristotle’s metaphysics of artefacts. This chapter shows that we can glean from Aristotle’s Physics an account of artefacts that is not only compatible with, but also directly related to the account offered in the Metaphysics. This account chiefly consists of: (1) the art analogy and (2) the fundamental distinction between artefacts and natural beings. Another Aristotelian conceptual tool I discuss in this chapter and is provided by the Physics is the distinction between ‘artificially caused’ and ‘artefact’. This survey will accomplish two tasks: it will present typical artefacts (i.e. generally accepted members of artificial kinds that are brought about by art) and it will open space for the conceptual possibility that art might be able to bring about things that are not artefacts proper. By identifying the building blocks presented in the Physics and presupposed in the Metaphysics, this chapter also lays the foundations for the remainder of the book.

This final chapter shows how further enquiry into artefacts’ metaphysics forces us to return to artefacts’ physics. At the same time, this further enquiry is in turn shown to fall outside the interests of a metaphysician and to be the task of a natural philosopher. For this reason, the chapter looks at artefacts as objects of inquiry and distinguishes between perspective of the natural scientist, the maker, and the user on the one hand, and the perspective of the metaphysician on the other. This discussion allows us to wrap up the results, to reassess the relationship between the Physics and the Metaphysics, and to evaluate the respective contributions of these works to Aristotle’s ontology of artefacts.