Aristotle : Matter and Form

Change, for Aristotle, can take place in many different categories. Local motion, as noted, is change in the category of place. Change in the category of quantity is growth (or shrinkage), and change in the category of quality (e.g., of colour) is what Aristotle calls “alteration.” Change in the category of substance, however—a change of one kind of thing into another—is very special. When a substance undergoes a change of quantity or quality, the same substance remains throughout. But does anything persist when one kind of thing turns into another? Aristotle’s answer is yes: matter. He says,

    “By matter, I mean what in itself is neither of any kind nor of any size nor describable by any of the categories of being. For it is something of which all these things are predicated, and therefore its essence is different from that of all the predicates.”

An entity that is not of any kind, size, or shape and of which nothing at all can be said may seem highly mysterious, but this is not what Aristotle has in mind. His ultimate matter (he sometimes calls it “prime matter”) is not in itself of any kind. It is not in itself of any particular size, because it can grow or shrink; it is not in itself water or steam, because it is both of these in turn. But this does not mean that there is any time at which it is not of any size or any time at which it is neither water nor steam nor anything else.

Ordinary life provides many examples of pieces of matter changing from one kind to another. A bottle containing a pint of cream may be found, after shaking, to contain not cream but butter. The stuff that comes out of the bottle is the same as the stuff that went into it; nothing has been added and nothing taken away. But what comes out is different in kind from what went in. It is from cases such as this that the Aristotelian notion of matter is derived.

Form

Although Aristotle’s system makes room for forms, they differ significantly from Forms as Plato conceived them. For Aristotle, the form of a particular thing is not separate (chorista) from the thing itself—any form is the form of some thing. In Aristotle’s physics, form is always paired with matter, and the paradigm examples of forms are those of material substances.

Aristotle distinguishes between “substantial” and “accidental” forms. A substantial form is a second substance (species or kind) considered as a universal; the predicate human, for example, is universal as well as substantial. Thus, Socrates is human may be described as predicating a second substance of a first substance (Socrates) or as predicating a substantial form of a first substance. Whereas substantial forms correspond to the category of substance, accidental forms correspond to categories other than substance; they are nonsubstantial categories considered as universals. Socrates is wise, for example, may be described as predicating a quality (wise) of a first substance or as predicating an accidental form of a first substance. Aristotle calls such forms “accidental” because they may undergo change, or be gained or lost, without thereby changing the first substance into something else or causing it to cease to exist. Substantial forms, in contrast, cannot be gained or lost without changing the nature of the substance of which they are predicated. In the propositions above, wise is an accidental form and human a substantial form; Socrates could survive the loss of the former but not the loss of the latter.

When a thing comes into being, neither its matter nor its form is created. When one manufactures a bronze sphere, for example, what comes into existence is not the bronze or the spherical shape but the shaped bronze. Similarly in the case of the human Socrates. But the fact that the forms of things are not created does not mean that they must exist independently of matter, outside space and time, as Plato maintained. The bronze sphere derives its shape not from an ideal Sphere but from its maker, who introduces form into the appropriate matter in the process of his work. Likewise, Socrates’ humanity derives not from an ideal Human but from his parents, who introduce form into the appropriate matter when they conceive him.

Thus, Aristotle reverses the question asked by Plato: “What is it that two human beings have in common that makes them both human?” He asks instead, “What makes two human beings two humans rather than one?” And his answer is that what makes Socrates distinct from his friend Callias is not their substantial form, which is the same, nor their accidental forms, which may be the same or different, but their matter. Matter, not form, is the principle of individuation.