hylomorphism

hylomorphism, (from Greek hylē, “matter”; morphē, “form”), in philosophy, metaphysical view according to which every natural body consists of two intrinsic principles, one potential, namely, primary matter, and one actual, namely, substantial form. It was the central doctrine of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. Before Aristotle, the Ionian philosophers had sought the basic constituents of bodies; but Aristotle observed that it was necessary to distinguish two types of principles. On the one hand, one must look for the primordial elements—i.e., for bodies that are not derived from others and of which all other bodies are composed. He found his solution to this question in Empedocles’ doctrine of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. On the other hand, one must look for the intrinsic conditions whereby a body is or comes to be what it is understood to be, and to answer this question he proposed his hylomorphic doctrine. The primordial elements correspond in a sense to those of modern physics insofar as the single elements can have independent existence or activity of their own and can therefore be known directly by way of experiment. Matter and form, however, are not bodies or physical entities that can exist or act independently: they exist and act only within and by the composite. Thus, they can be known only indirectly, by intellectual analysis, as the metaphysical principles of bodies.

Aristotle based his argument chiefly on the analysis of “becoming,” or substantial change. If a being changes into another being, something permanent must exist that is common to the two terms; otherwise there would be no transformation but merely a succession by the annihilation of the first term and the creation of the second. This permanent and common something cannot itself be strictly a being because a being already is and does not become, and because a being “in act” cannot be an intrinsic part of a being possessing a unity of its own; it must therefore be a being “in potency,” a potential principle, passive and indeterminate. At the same time, in the two terms of the change, there must also be an actual, active, determining principle. The potential principle is matter, the actual principle, form. Phenomenological arguments for hylomorphism have also been proposed.

The hylomorphic doctrine was received and variously interpreted by the Greek and Arab commentators of Aristotle and by the Scholastic philosophers. Thomas Aquinas gave a full account of hylomorphism in his commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics and in his De ente et essentia (“Of Being and Essence”). Many medieval scholars, Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) and Bonaventure among them, extended hylomorphism to all beings in creation—even to angels.

Opposed to hylomorphism are atomism, mechanism, and dynamism, all of which deny the intrinsic composition of metaphysical principles in bodies and recognize only physical principles, such as corpuscles, pure mathematical extension, or forces and energies. These theories agree also in denying the hylomorphist’s claim that intrinsic change can occur in the ultimate realities of which the physical world is composed and, further, in reducing the phenomenon of becoming to a simple local movement or to purely accidental changes of a single selfsame reality.

A hylomorphic framework has been employed in theology in explaining the Eucharist and the relation of soul and body in man.

The science of physics, after having been dominated for 300 years by mechanism, atomism, and dynamism, has returned in the 20th century to a more naturalistic conception allowing the intrinsic transmutability of the physical elements—protons, neutrons, electrons, mesons, and other elementary particles—the transformation of mass into energy and vice versa, and the nonconservation of elementary particles. Physics thus poses again the problem that Aristotle’s hylomorphism was designed to solve. Nevertheless, because for Aristotle matter and form were metaphysical principles, they must not be equated with any physical concept or entity.