more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Though nothing exists in nature except individual bodies which exhibit pure individual acts [powers] in accordance with law…It is this law and its clauses which we understand by the term Forms.
Gist of Idea
There are only individual bodies containing law-based powers, and the Forms are these laws
Source
Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620], p.103), quoted by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §3
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.8
A Reaction
This isn't far off what Aristotle had in mind, when he talks of forms as being 'principles', though there is more emphasis on mechanisms in the original idea. Note that Bacon takes laws so literally that he refers to their 'clauses'.
| 16970 | A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle] |
| 16033 | There are only individual bodies containing law-based powers, and the Forms are these laws [Bacon] |
| 16625 | In hylomorphism all the explanation of actions is in the form, and the matter doesn't do anything [Bacon] |
| 12715 | Leibniz strengthened hylomorphism by connecting it to force in physics [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| 14496 | Structure or form are right at the centre of modern rigorous modes of enquiry [Koslicki] |
| 16613 | Hylomorphism declined because scholastics made it into a testable physical theory [Pasnau] |
| 16747 | Scholastics made forms substantial, in a way unintended by Aristotle [Pasnau] |
| 16759 | Scholastics began to see substantial form more as Aristotle's 'efficient' cause [Pasnau] |