17043
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Form, not matter, is a thing's nature, because it is actual, rather than potential [Aristotle]
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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.
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From:
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b07)
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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?
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16970
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A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle]
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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.
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From:
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24)
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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.
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9071
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We first sense whole entities, and then move to particular parts of it [Aristotle]
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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.
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From:
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a22)
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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.
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