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Full Idea
In many cases, the last three of the causes [aition] come to the same thing. What a thing is and its purpose are the same, and the original source of change is, in terms of form, the same as these two. After all, it is a man who generates a man.
Gist of Idea
A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too
Source
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.49
A Reaction
One of the few illuminating remarks about what the 'form' in hylomorphism is supposed to do. This may be the key to virtue ethics - that the form of man, which we learn elsewhere is the psuché, is also man's drive and man's very purpose.
Related Idea
Idea 16969 Science refers the question Why? to four causes/explanations: matter, form, source, purpose [Aristotle]
| 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] |