Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Physics', 'A priori/A posteriori' and 'Certain Physical Essays'

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6 ideas

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / a. Hylomorphism

17043	Form, not matter, is a thing's nature, because it is actual, rather than potential [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Form is a more plausible candidate for being nature than matter is because we speak of a thing as what it actually is at the time, rather than what it then is potentially.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b07)
	A reaction: Note that matter remains potential, even when it is part of an actual thing. This seems to be the obvious point that a statue isn't potentially anything else, but its clay is potentially other objects. Does Aristotle think clay is thereby less real?

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / c. Form as causal

16970	A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle]
	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.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24)
	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.

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / d. Form as unifier

16104	Unity of the form is just unity of the definition [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Being one in form is just another way of saying one 'in definition'.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190a16)
	A reaction: I take this to be highly significant in understanding Aristotle. The crucial notion of form is tied to the way in which we understand the world, and does not refer to some independent fact about how it might really be.

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 3. Matter of an Object

11255	In feature-generation the matter (such as bronze) endures, but in generation it doesn't [Aristotle, by Politis]
	Full Idea: There is a fundamental distinction between feature-change and generation. ..Materials such as bronze cannot by themselves explain why they are the particular material things they are. But matter which generates things does not endure.
	From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4
	A reaction: This very nice distinction is rather undermined by our modern understanding of generation, but it still might work at a lower level. Transmuting an element by bombarding it is different from reshaping the stuff.

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts

16791	There is no whole except for the parts [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: There is no whole over and above the parts.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 210a16)
	A reaction: Pasnau says Aristotle contradicts this at Met. 1041b12, where the syllable is more than its elements.

9071	We first sense whole entities, and then move to particular parts of it [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: We have to progress from the general to the particular, because whole entities are more intelligible to the senses, and anything general is a kind of whole, in the sense that it includes a number of things which we could call its parts.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a22)
	A reaction: This is the first step in the process of abstraction, which Aristotle describes further in Posterior Analytics. It is common sense that a child will be aware of a horse before it is aware of its hoof, or its colour, or its strength.