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 physicsinsofar 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.
SIMILAR TOPICS
 Great Chain of Being
 hylozoism
 ontology
 personalism
 spiritualism
 panpsychism
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.