What is the FOMALITY OF EFFICIENT CAUSES? and who postulated this and why.?

Question

I am trying to separate the real students of philosophy from the tons of wannabes whose questions and answers remind me of a freshman who is so proud he got in MENSA. No googlers alowed ! I can spot them. 10 pts !

Answer 1

ahh....it would seem you know the answer

(cough...out)

upon further goggling i have found that it was Aristotle

why?

to find the root of information(i think)

after thought (you know that by putting forward a question you

are putting the answeree at a socialy awkward position and yet you still continue to belittle us,to kick a dog while it's down as they say.  This is an injustice and I hope that even with all

the social status driven people out there(all?) you may find that all we are here for is to maybe help you sometime by answering a trivial question or what have you.

Answer 2

Formality of efficient causes refers to the coincidence of A and B as the occasion for C to exercise its efficiency in act D.

Links from the first cause may be sufficient and not necessary for C to D; or, they may be necessary and non-conducive to D.

What that generally means is that I have no clue because I just googled it :(

Answer 3

My best guess is that this comes from St. Thomas of Aquninas. He was trying to prove the existance of "A God" or at least some creator of the world, universe, etc. . In one of his essays he used something like the law of effecient causation (I bet it was "formality of..) just as you said . He argued that there are no known examples of a thing that is found to be  the efficient cause of itself because if so it would be prior to itself which would be impossible. Some one before my answer mentioned Aristotle. In one of his essays it can be argued that he was the first (to use your big word)  "postulater" of this concept but this is a stretch and he was not using it to prove the existance of God.