Prime matter plays an indispensable role in Aristotle’s philosophy, enabling him to avoid the pitfalls of both naïve Platonism and nominalism. Prime matter is best thought of as a kind of infinitely divisible and atomless bare particularity, grounding the distinctness of distinct members of the same species. Such bare particularity is needed in symmetrical situations, like a world consisting of indistinguishable Max Black spheres. Bare particularity is especially important in modern physics, given the homogeneity and isotropy of space. With the (...) importance of fields in classical, relativistic, and quantum physics, we have good reason to prefer something like Aristotle’s continuous, infinitely divisible matter over indivisible particles. Mass and energy in relativistic physics also points in the direction of prime matter as the enduring substrate of these quantities. Recent work on Aristotelian interpretations of quantum mechanics, further underscores the contemporary relevance of prime matter. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Physics I-II into Portuguese, with commentaries. Tradução para o português dos livros I e II da Física de Aristóteles, com comentários.

I discuss some of Aristotle’s scattered remarks from which one can construct his conception of matter. Aristotle seems to oscillate between two conceptions: one in which matter is the principle of becoming, another in which matter is a constituent element with no contribution for processes of becoming. Sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a thing independent in itself, and the correlated form is a feature that does not contribute to the matter’s essence, nor is a necessary condition for its existence. But (...) sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a constituent element the existence of which depends on the whole thing it is the matter of. These different approaches to matter seem to suggest an inconsistent theory of matter. However, I argue that, quite to the contrary, Aristotle has a consistent theory about matter. One of my main points is to distinguish contexts in which Aristotle is indeed talking about matter in general from contexts in which he uses the term “matter” to refer to a given thing that was previously taken as matter and to talk about that thing not qua matter, but qua the thing it is. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the foundations of Plotinus’ innovative theory that prime matter is unaffectable. I begin by showing that Plotinus’ main arguments for this thesis (in Ennead 3.6) all rely upon the controversial assumption that the properties prime matter underlies are not properties of prime matter itself. It is then argued that prime matter’s privation of sensible qualities has its conceptual basis in an idiosyncratic understanding of form-matter composition generally, and its primary doctrinal basis in Aristotle’s critical reports (...) on the Platonists’ substratum in Physics 1.9. While Plotinus finds Platonic authority for unaffectible matter in the Receptacle passage of the Timaeus, it is Aristotle’s testimony that provides the crucial impetus for reading that text in this way. On this basis, Plotinus develops a Platonist conception of form’s inherence in matter with distinctively non-Aristotelian features. (shrink)

The traditional concept of prime matter – a purely potential substratum that persists through substantial change and serves to constitute the generated substance – has played a dwindling part in Aristotelian scholarship over the centuries. In medieval interpretations of Aristotle, prime matter was thought to play these two roles in all substantial changes, not only in changes at the level of the four elements. In more recent centuries, traditional prime matter was relegated only to the context of substantial changes between (...) the four elements. And in the last few decades of Aristotelian scholarship, it has become common either to downplay or even to eliminate prime matter’s role in elemental changes too. I will support the traditional concept of prime matter by showing that it aligns Aristotle’s view of elemental change with one of the central constraints on matter imposed in his Physics to a degree that cannot be achieved on the non-traditional interpretations: the need for matter to be in potentiality in a way that avoids the two problematic extremes of mere persistence, on the one hand, and destruction, on the other. This point will be supported by Aristotle’s rejection of both monism and pluralism in On Generation and Corruption. Second, I will argue that Aristotle calls for precisely the same kind of potentiality in a very different context: his critique of Anaxagoras’s view of matter in the Generation of Animals. Here the very same problematic extremes of mere persistence and destruction that plague the alternate views to traditional prime matter also plague the dominant views on the matter for animal generation. Especially since Aristotle takes living things to be paradigmatic substances, these comparisons suggest that the apparent idiosyncrasies of elemental transformation which have motivated interpreters to depart from traditional prime matter may not be so idiosyncratic after all. And if that is so, it may be that the problem lies not so much with traditional prime matter as with our assumptions about how persistence and constitution work in substantial change according to Aristotle. In the end, this line of argument opens the door to three new potential interpretations of the matter for substantial generation in Aristotle, interpretations which align with his concept of potentiality and – to varying degrees – with traditional prime matter as well. (shrink)

Aristotle's notion of matter has been seen either as unintelligible, it being some mysterious potential entity that is nothing in its own right, or as simply the notion of an everyday object. The latter is the common assumption in contemporary approaches to hylomorphism, but as has been pointed out, especially by scholars with a background in ancient philosophy, if we conceive of matter as an object itself we cannot account for the unity of hylomorphic substances. Thus, they assume that a (...) hylomorphic substance is an essential unity and matter not a constituent at all. This solution to the problem of unity, however, brings us back to the mysterious notion of matter. For these reasons, I will revisit Aristotle's conception of matter in this paper. I will argue that an understanding of form as a cause of being requires that matter be an independent constituent of the individual substance. However, I agree that the conception of matter as an individual object with an essence makes it impossible to solve the problem of unity. We therefore need to take seriously Aristotle's assertion that matter is nothing in its own right and not an individual. By denying that matter is an individual, Aristotle does not introduce a mysterious entity, nor does he deny that it can be identified independently of the whole; instead, matter for Aristotle is an irreducible plurality, and this explains why it is not an individual and has no essence. I will conclude with some observations on how this gives rise to two competing versions of hylomorphic constitution. (shrink)

In Physics I.8, Aristotle outlines and responds to an Eleatic argument against the reality of change. I defend a new reading according to which the argu- ment assumes Predicational Monism, the claim that each being can possess only one property. In Phys. I.2, Aristotle responds to Predicational Monism, which he attributes to the Eleatics; I argue that he uses this response to distinguish coin- cidental from non-coincidental becoming, a distinction he employs in Phys I.8 to resolve the argument against the (...) reality of change. The Eleatics’ acceptance of Predicational Monism, I argue, explains why this distinction is unavailable to them. (shrink)

Aristotle’s On generation and corruption raises a vital question: how is mixture, or what we would now call chemical combination, possible? It also offers an outline of a solution to the problem and a set of criteria that a successful solution must meet. Understanding Aristotle’s solution and developing a viable peripatetic theory of chemical combination has been a source of controversy over the last two millennia. We describe seven criteria a peripatetic theory of mixture must satisfy: uniformity, recoverability, potentiality, equilibrium, (...) alteration, incompleteness, and the ability to distinguish mixture from generation, corruption, juxtaposition, augmentation, and alteration. After surveying the theories of Philoponus , Avicenna , Averroes , and John M. Cooper , we argue for the merits of Richard Rufus of Cornwall’s theory. Rufus was a little known scholastic philosopher who became a Franciscan theologian in 1238, after teaching Aristotelian natural philosophy as a secular master in Paris. Lecturing on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, around the year 1235, he offered his students a solution to the problem of mixture that we believe satisfies Aristotle’s seven criteria.Author Keywords: Mixture; Mixt; Chemical combination; Accidental potential; Potential; Elements; Medieval chemistry; Peripatetic chemistry; Aristotelian science; Richardus Rufus; Averroes ; Avicenna ; Philoponus ; John M. Cooper. (shrink)

Aristotle’s On generation and corruption raises a vital question: how is mixture, or what we would now call chemical combination, possible? It also offers an outline of a solution to the problem and a set of criteria that a successful solution must meet. Understanding Aristotle’s solution and developing a viable peripatetic theory of chemical combination has been a source of controversy over the last two millennia. We describe seven criteria a peripatetic theory of mixture must satisfy: uniformity, recoverability, potentiality, equilibrium, (...) alteration, incompleteness, and the ability to distinguish mixture from generation, corruption, juxtaposition, augmentation, and alteration. After surveying the theories of Philoponus (d. 574), Avicenna(d. 1037), Averroes (d. 1198), and John M. Cooper (fl. circa2000), we argue for the merits of Richard Rufus of Cornwall’s theory. Rufus (fl. 1231–1256) was a little known scholastic philosopher who became a Franciscan theologian in 1238, after teaching Aristotelian natural philosophy as a secular master in Paris. Lecturing on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, around the year 1235, he offered his students a solution to the problem of mixture that we believe satisfies Aristotle’s seven criteria. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Aristotle takes up the topic of change (or coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be) in both the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione. He distinguishes between simple coming-to-be (substantial change), as when something comes into existence, and qualified coming-to-be (accidental change), as when an already existing thing alters, or moves, or changes in some other way. But he also maintains a persistence principle: that in every change, whether simple or qualified, there is something that persists throughout the change. I examine the question of (...) whether this principle threatens the viability of the distinction between substantial and accidental change by comparing what Aristotle has to say about it in the Physics with what he says in GC. In the process, I discuss several recent treatments of the topic as well as some conflicting views about the role, if any, of prime matter in Aristotle's account of substantial change. (shrink)

Ackrill’s Problem is a tension between Aristotle’s alleged view that the matter of a living being is a body that is essentially ensouled, and his view that the matter of a substance preexists its generation. Most interpreters solve the tension by claiming that the subject of substantial generation is not the organic body of the living being, but its non-organic matter. I defend a different solution by showing that the embryological theory ofOn the Generation of Animalsimplies that the organic body (...) of a living being already exists before acquiring the soul in actuality. (shrink)

In 'Physics' I.7, Aristotle claims that plants and animals are generated from sperma. Since most understood sperma to be an ovum, this claim threatens to undermine the standard view that, for Aristotle, the matter natural beings are generated from persists through their generation. By focusing on Aristotle’s discussion of sperma in the first book of the 'Generation of Animals', I show that, for Aristotle, sperma in the female is surplus blood collected in the uterus and not an ovum. I subsequently (...) argue that, for Aristotle, this blood does persist through the production of the fetus. (shrink)

In Aristotle's biological works, there is an apparent conflict between passages which seem to insist that only hypothetical necessity (anagk ex hypotheses) operates in the sublunary world, and passages in which some biological phenomena are explained as simply (hapls) necessary. Parallel to this textual problem lies the claim that explanations in terms of simple necessity render teleological explanations (in some of which Aristotle puts hypothetical necessity to use) superfluous. I argue that the textual conflict is only apparent, and that Aristotle's (...) notion of coincidental sameness allows him to avoid the superfluity problem. (shrink)

Three claims about essential properties are frequently advanced in recent discussions: (1) a property belongs essentially to a thing only if that thing would cease to exist without that property, (2) an essential property is explanatory, And (3) an essential property is such that it must belong to everything to which it belongs. I argue that the "only if" in (1) cannot be changed to "if and only if" and (1) needs to be supplemented by (2), And that (2) is (...) an indispensable feature of aristotle's view of essential properties and that it casts doubt on (3), Although (2) is usually assumed to provide a reason for (3). (shrink)