Matter, Elements and Substance in Aristotle

Matter, Elements and Substance in Aristotle ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI IN AmSTOrL]~'S PHILOSOPHY, are the simple bodies, earth, air. fire and water, substances? Are they composed of substantial form and matter? What serves as the formal dimension for such bodies, and what kind of "'primary" matter underlies it7 In the be~nning of his analysis of substance in Metaphy~:,rVII # 2, Aristotle writes: "Substance seems to occur most clearly in bodies (and so we say that animals and plants and their parts arc substances, and also the natural bodies like fire and water and earth and all similar things, and whatever are parts of these or made up of them, whether of certain ones or of all, such as the heaven and its parts, the stars and moon and sun)" (I02Sb8-13). This is a list of things commonly accepted as substances? Aristotle goes on to say that we must test them to find whether or not common opinion is correct, whether all of these are indeed substances, or only some of them, or none at all. In the pages that follow he devdops his own philosophical theory of substance. In /~ 16 he turns back to his point of departure in common opinion and decides: "It is clear that of those things that seem to bc substances, most are potentialities: the parts of animals (for none of them is separated; when separated all of them are like matter) and earth and fire and air; for none of these are one. but they are like a heap until they are concocted and some one thing comes out of them" (1040b5-10). Thus critical philosophical analysis shows that in the main common opinion is wrong; most of what it takes to be substances are really not such in the full sense, including the simple bodies, earth, air, fire and water. These are substances only potentially. Aristotle does not discard common opinion entirely; he does not say that simple bodies fail to be substances in any sense at all. But they are not substances in the full sense. Three points must be stressed in this conclusion: (a) The reason the simple bodies are not fully substance is that they lack the unity needed for this: "for none The "common opinion" Aristotle examines is not just popular opinion but also the belief of the physicist-philosopbers who tried to explain things in terms of their parts and the stuff they are made of. These materialistic conceptions about what is real seem to Aristotle to be reflected in common, popular opinion. In contrast the mathematical concept of substance is credited "to certain persons" (1028616) as is belief in the Ideas. The same contrast between belief in the substantiality of bodies as a common opinion, and the esoteric concept of mathematicals and Ideas as held by only a few, is found in Metaphysics VIII ~ 1 (1o4~7-12). [2631 264 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of themare one, but they are like a heap." (b) By implication, the simple bodies can be considered substances in the sense of substratum or foundation (hypokeimenon), since they must be "concocted" or properly disposed and worked into the unity of a single thing; that is, they must receive a form, and thus act as a substratum or foundation for that form. 2 For Aristotle, substance can be said in many ways: as form, as substratum or foundation, and as the compound of both. 3 Form or essence is the primary sense of substance, but this does not prevent foundation from being called substance in a derived sense. It is precisely as foundation that matter and the simple bodies can be called substance. (e) In terms of act and potency, matter and the elements are substance only potentially, but this is true whenever substance is taken as foundation. Only form or essence is substance in actuality.4 Since the Metaphysics indicates that simple bodies are not substances in the ordinary sense, our problem is to determine how they are substances at all. Our treatment breaks down into two major sections: ~ 1-~3 examine what serves as the "formal" dimension in simple bodies, while ~ 4-# 6 discuss the "material" dimension, the prime matter that underlies...