Matter and Form
Matter and Form

Author: Ann Ward

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2009-10-29

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0739135708

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Matter and Form explores the relationship that has long existed between natural science and political philosophy. Plato's Socrates articulates the Ideas or Forms as an account of the ultimate source of causality in the cosmos. Aristotle's natural philosophy had a significant impact on his political philosophy: he argues that humans are by nature political animals, having their natural end in the city whose regime is hierarchically structured based on differences in moral and intellectual capacity. Medieval theorists attempt to synthesize classical natural and political philosophy with the revealed truths of scripture; they argue that divine reason structures an ordered universe, the awareness of which allows for psychic and political harmony among human beings. Enlightenment thinkers challenge the natural philosophy of classical and medieval philosophers, ushering in a more liberal political order. For example, for Hobbes, there is no rest in nature as there are no Aristotelian forms or natural places that govern matter. Hobbes applies his mechanistic understanding of material nature to his understanding of human nature: individuals are by nature locked in an endless pursuit of power until death. However, from this mechanistic understanding of humanity's natural condition, Hobbes develops a social contract theory in which civil and political society is constituted from consent. Later thinkers, such as Locke and Rousseau, modify this Hobbesian premise in their pursuit of the protection of rights and a free society. Nevertheless, materialist conceptions of the cosmos have not always given rise to liberal democratic philosophies. Historicist influence on scientific inquiry in the nineteenth century is connected to Darwin's theory of evolution; Darwin reasoned that over time the process of natural selection produces ever newer and more highly adapted species. Reflecting a form of social Darwinism, Nietzsche envisions an aristocratic order that draws its inspiration from art rather than the rationalism embodied in the history of natural and political philosophy. Matter and Form's interdisciplinary approach, by international scholars in philosophy and political science, suits it for researchers, teachers and students of these fields.

Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy
Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy

Author: Gideon Manning

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-06-22

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 900421870X

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Bringing together an international team of historians of science and philosophy to discuss the fate of matter and form, this volume shows how disputes about matter and form spurred innovation as well as conservatism in early modern science and philosophy.

Aristotle on Matter, Form, and Moving Causes
Aristotle on Matter, Form, and Moving Causes

Author: Devin Henry

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-12-05

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1108475574

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Examines Aristotle's doctrine of hylomorphism and its importance for understanding the process by which substances come into being.

Form and Matter
Form and Matter

Author: David S. Oderberg

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1999-07-09

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780631213895

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Form and Matter is a collection of six papers by leading philosophers on topics in contemporary metaphysics looked at from an Aristotelian perspective. Topics covered include substance, material constitution, the metaphysics of mind, the nature of mixture,and the analysis of what it is to be a living thing.

Space, Time, Matter, and Form
Space, Time, Matter, and Form

Author: David Bostock

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2006-02-16

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0199286868

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Space, Time, Matter, and Form collects ten of David Bostock's essays on themes from Aristotle's Physics, four of them published here for the first time. The first five papers look at issues raised in the first two books of the Physics, centred on notions of matter and form, and the idea of substance as what persists through change. They also range over other of Aristotle's scientific works, such as his biology and psychology and the account of change in his De Generatione et Corruptione. The volume's remaining essays examine themes in later books of the Physics, including infinity, place, time, and continuity. Bostock argues that Aristotle's views on these topics are of real interest in their own right, independent of his notions of substance, form, and matter; they also raise some pressing problems of interpretation, which these essays seek to resolve.

Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements
Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements

Author: Joseph Bobik

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 1998-03-15

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0268076332

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Joseph Bobik offers a translation of Aquinas’s De Principiis Naturae (circa 1252) and De Mixtione Elementorum (1273) accompanied by a continuous commentary, followed by two essays: “Elements in the Composition of Physical Substances” and “The Elements in Aquinas and the Elements Today.” The Principles of Nature introduces the reader to the basic Aristotelian principles such as matter and form, the four causes so fundamental to Aquinas’s philosophy. On Mixture of the Elements examines the question of how the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) remain within the physical things composed from them.

Matter and Form
Matter and Form

Author: Ann Ward

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780739135686

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Matter and Form explores the relationship between natural science and political philosophy from the classical to contemporary eras, taking an interdisciplinary approach to the philosophic understanding of the structure and process of the natural world and its impact on the history of political philosophy. It illuminates the importance of philosophic reflection on material nature to moral and political theorizing, mediating between the sciences and humanities and making a contribution to ending the isolation between them.

Form, Matter, and Mixture in Aristotle
Form, Matter, and Mixture in Aristotle

Author: Frank A. Lewis

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1997-03-06

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780631200925

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Explores different applications of Aristotle's hypothesis on the components of form, matter and pyschological states.

Aristotle's Metaphysics
Aristotle's Metaphysics

Author: Jeremy Kirby

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2008-12-01

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1441144544

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Aristotle maintains that biological organisms are compounds of matter and form and that compounds that have the same form are individuated by their matter. According to Aristotle, an object that undergoes change is an object that undergoes a change in form, i.e. form is imposed upon something material in nature. Aristotle therefore identifies organisms according to their matter and essential forms, forms that are arguably essential to an object's existence. Jeremy Kirby addresses a difficulty in Aristotle's metaphysics, namely the possibility that two organisms of the same species might share the same matter. If they share the same form, as Aristotle seems to suggest, then they seem to share that which they cannot, their identity. By taking into account Aristotle's views on the soul, its relation to living matter, and his rejection of the possibility of resurrection, Kirby reconstructs an answer to this problem and shows how Aristotle relies on some of the central themes in his system in order to resist this unwelcome result that his metaphysics might suggest.

Form without Matter
Form without Matter

Author: Mark Eli Kalderon

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-01-29

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0191027731

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Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of historiography. He considers the phenomenology and metaphysics of sensory presentation through the examination of an ancient aporia. Specifically, he argues that a puzzle about perception at a distance is behind Empedocles' theory of vision. Empedocles conceives of perception as a mode of material assimilation, but this raises a puzzle about color vision, since color vision seems to present colors that inhere in distant objects. But if the colors inhere in distant objects how can they be taken in by the organ of sight and so be palpable to sense? Aristotle purports to resolve this puzzle in his definition of perception as the assimilation of sensible form without the matter of the perceived particular. Aristotle explicitly criticizes Empedocles, though he is keen to retain the idea that perception is a mode of assimilation, if not a material mode. Aristotle's notorious definition has long puzzled commentators. Kalderon shows how, read in light of Empedoclean puzzlement about the sensory presentation of remote objects, Aristotle's definition of perception can be better understood. Moreover, when so read, the resulting conception of perception is both attractive and defensible.