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3 ideas
17006 | Prime matter has no place in Aristotle's theories, and passages claiming it are misread [Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: I argue that prime matter has no place in Aristotle's elemental theory. ..References to prime matter are found in Aristotle's work because his theory was thought to need the doctrine. If I am right, these passages will all admit of another interpretation. | |
From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], App) | |
A reaction: If correct, this strikes me as important for the history of ideas, because scholastics got themselves in a right tangle over prime matter. See Pasnau on it. It pushed the 17th century into corpuscularianism. |
16093 | Prime matter is actually nothing and potentially everything (or potentially an element) [Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: Prime matter is supposed to be actually nothing and potentially everything or, at any rate, potentially the simplest bodies - earth, water, air and fire. | |
From: Mary Louise Gill (Aristotle on Substance [1989], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: The view that the four elements turn out to be prime matter is distinctive of Gill's approach. Prime matter sounds like quark soup in the early universe. |
19436 | Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The active principle is not attributed by me to bare or primary matter, which is merely passive ...but to clothed or secondary matter which in addition contains a primitive entelechy, or active principle. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Wagner [1710], 1710 §2) | |
A reaction: Secondary matter contains monads. The puzzling question is what primary matter consists of. It is not atoms, because it is infinitely divisible, and it seems to be composed of corpuscles. But what is it made of? Just gunge? He says it is 'flux'. |