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3 ideas
13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
13082 | The complete concept of an individual includes contingent properties, as well as necessary ones [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: In this complete concept of possible Peter are contained not only essential or necessary things, ..but also existential things, or contingent items included there, because the nature of an individual substance is to have a perfect or complete concept. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Of liberty, Fate and God's grace [1690], Grua 311), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 3.3.1 | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 13077, where he seems to say that the complete concept is only necessarily linked to properties which will predict future events - though I suppose that would have to include all of the contingent properties mentioned here. |