Prime matter

One obvious question pertains to how low such underlying levels might go. In fact there is considerable controversy concerning how to conceive the bottom rung of Aristotle’s hierarchy of matter. Aristotle believes that everything is made of earth, air, fire and water. These elements are defined by their possession of one of each of the two fundamental pairs of opposites, hot/cold and wet/dry. Aristotle also thinks that these elements can change into one another (On the Heavens iii 6, 305a14–35). If his analysis of change is correct, when some water changes into some air, there must be something underlying, some substrate, which persists through the change, initially having the essential properties of water (being wet and cold, on Aristotle’s view) and then later those of air (being wet and hot). The thing that underlies this kind of change cannot be any of the elements, since it must be capable of possessing the properties characteristic of each of the elements successively, capable of being first cold and then hot, for example. The traditional interpretation of Aristotle, which goes back as far as Augustine (De Genesi contra Manichaeos i 5–7) and Simplicius (On Aristotle’s Physics i 7), and is accepted by Aquinas (De Principiis Naturae §13), holds that Aristotle believes in something called “prime matter”, which is the matter of the elements, where each element is, then, a compound of this matter and a form. This prime matter is usually described as pure potentiality, just as, on the form side, the unmoved movers are said by Aristotle to be pure actuality, form without any matter (Metaphysics xii 6). What it means to call prime matter “pure potentiality” is that it is capable of taking on any form whatsoever, and thus is completely without any essential properties of its own. It exists eternally, since, if it were capable of being created or destroyed, there would have to be some even lower matter to underlie those changes. Because it is the matter of the elements, which are themselves present in all more complex bodies, it is omnipresent, and underlies not only elemental generation and destruction, but all physical changes. As a completely indeterminate substratum, prime matter bears some similarities to what modern philosophy has called a “bare particular” (see Sider 2006), although, not being a particular, it may have more in common with so-called “gunk” (see Sider 1993).
A similar idea is to be found in Plato’s Timaeus, 49–52, where, in addition to his Forms and the particulars which instantiate them, he argues for the existence of a third category of thing, “a receptacle of all coming to be” (49a5–6):

اقتباس :: it must always be called by the same term. For it does not depart from its own character at all. It both continually receives all things, and has never taken on a form similar to any of the things that enter it in any way. For it is laid down by nature as a recipient of impressions for everything, being changed and formed variously by the things that enter it, and because of them it appears different at different times. (50b6–c4)

Plato also motivates his receptacle by appealing to the phenomenon of the elements changing into one another, and, although he refers to it as “space” and not “matter”, the traditional interpretation has it that, as he often does, Aristotle has adopted an idea first developed by his mentor.
More recently, opponents of attributing a doctrine of prime matter to Aristotle have complained that there is insufficient evidence for his holding this kind of view, and that it is so philosophically unappealing that principles of charity militate against it as an interpretation. Such scholars point out that Aristotle actually criticizes Plato’s account from the Timaeus, in On Generation and Corruption ii 1:

اقتباس :: what Plato has written in the Timaeus is not based on any precisely-articulated conception. For he has not stated clearly whether his “Omnirecipient” exists in separation from the elements; nor does he make any use of it. (329a13–15)

Although Aristotle is clearly criticizing Plato here, it may be that his point is simply that Plato was not sufficiently clear that prime matter is never to be found existing apart from the elements, and that he did not give good enough reasons for its introduction, not that he was wrong to believe in it.
In this connection it is appropriate to note that Aristotle does in fact use the expressions “prime matter” (prôtê hulê) and “primary underlying thing” (prôton hupokeimenon) several times:Physics i 9, 192a31, ii 1, 193a10 and 193a29; Metaphysics v 4, 1014b32 and 1015a7–10, v 6, 1017a5–6, viii 4, 1044a23, ix 7, 1049a24–7; Generation of Animals i 20, 729a32. The mere fact that he uses the phrase is inconclusive, however, since, he makes it explicit that “prime matter” can refer either to a thing’s proximate matter or to whatever ultimately makes it up:

اقتباس :: Nature is prime matter (and this in two ways, either prime in relation to the thing or prime in general; for example, in the case of bronze works the bronze is prime in relation to them, but prime in general would be perhaps water, if everything that can be melted is water). (1015a7–10)

Here Aristotle is referring to his predecessor Thales’ view that everything is ultimately made of water, which he in fact rejects.
In other passages too Aristotle seems to leave the question of whether or not there is prime matter deliberately open. In Metaphysics ix 7, he uses a conditional to talk about the possibility:

اقتباس :: it seems that what we call not this, but that-en—for example, we call the box not wood, but wooden, nor do we call the wood earth, but earthen, and again earth, if it is this way, we do not call something else, but that-en—that is always potentially without qualification the next thing…But if there is something primary, which is no longer called that-en with respect to something else, this is prime matter. For example, if earth is airy, and air is not fire but firey, fire is prime matter, being a this. (1049a18–22…24–27)

Here Aristotle uses the generic adjective “that-en” (ekeininon), a word that he coins, to mean made of that material. If a material could not be so described, it would be prime matter. Again, he shows himself aware of prime matter as a possibility, without wanting to commit to it here.
Another key passage where Aristotle has been thought to commit himself more decisively to prime matter is Metaphysics vii 3. Here we are told:

اقتباس :: By “matter” I mean that which in itself is not called a substance nor a quantity nor anything else by which being is categorized. For it is something of which each of these things is predicated, whose being is different from each of its predicates (for the others are predicated of substance, and substance is predicated of matter). Therefore this last is in itself neither substance nor quantity nor anything else. Nor is it the denials of any of these; for even denials belong to things accidentally. (1029a20–26)

Although the word “prime” does not occur here, Aristotle is evidently talking about prime matter. A natural way to read this passage is that he is saying there is a wholly indeterminate underlying thing, which he calls “matter”, and it is not a substance. Those who wish to avoid attributing a doctrine of prime matter to Aristotle must offer a different interpretation: that if we were to make the mistake of regarding matter, as opposed to form, as substance, we would be committed (absurdly) to the existence of a wholly indeterminate underlying thing.
In addition to disputing the correct interpretation of these passages where Aristotle explicitly mentions prime matter, much of the debate has centered around, on the one hand, whether what he says about change really commits him to it, on the other, whether the idea is really absurd. Some opponents of prime matter have argued that Aristotle does not, after all, wish to insist that there is always something which persists through a change (see Charlton 1970, Appendix, and 1983). In particular, when one of the elements changes into another, there is an underlying thing—the initial element—but in this case it does not persist. They point out that in the key passage ofPhysics i 7, where Aristotle gives his account of change in general, he uses the expressions “underlying thing” and “thing that remains”. While readers have usually supposed that these terms are used interchangeably to refer to the substance, in cases of accidental change, and the matter in substantial changes, this assumption can be challenged. In the elemental generation case, perhaps there is no thing that remains, just an initial elements that underlies. The worry about this interpretation is whether it is consistent with Aristotle’s belief that nothing can come to be out of nothing. If there is no “thing that remains” in a case of elemental generation, how is an instance of water changing into air to be distinguished from the supposedly impossible sort of change whereby some water vanishes into nothing, and is instantly replaced by some air which has materialized out of nothing?
The main philosophical objections to prime matter are that it is, at best, a mysterious entity that we cannot know anything about, since we never perceive it directly, but only the things it underlies. Of course, there can be good theoretical reasons for believing in things that we never actually see. No one has ever seen a quark, but we can still know things about them, based on the kind of theoretical work that they are required to perform. Still, Aristotle’s theory will be more parsimonious, if he can manage without positing such theoretical entities. At worst, prime matter is said to be outright contradictory. It is supposed to be capable of taking on any form whatsoever, and thus to have no essential properties of its own. The idea that it has no essential properties of its own seems to make it difficult for us to characterize it positively in any way: how can it be invisible, or eternal, or the ultimate bearer of properties, if these are not properties that belong to it essentially? Moreover, if it is what ultimately underlies all properties, it seems that it must be able to take on properties that are inconsistent with what we would like to be able to think of as its own nature: when Socrates turns blue, there is also some prime matter that underlies him, which also turns blue. But how can prime matter be simultaneous invisible and blue? To get around these problems, it looks as though proponents of prime matter will have to distinguish between two different kinds of property that prime matter has, or perhaps two different ways in which it has properties. There are its essential properties, which define the kind of entity that it is, and which it has permanently, and then there are its accidental properties, which it gains and loses as it underlies different sorts of thing. A worry about this solution is, if one can distinguish between the prime matter and its essential properties, this might suggest that there is a need for a further entity to act as the underlying thing for those properties, and then this further entity would need to have its own nature, and something to underlie that nature, and so on. It seems best to try to avoid such an infinite regress by insisting that prime matter can underlie its own essential properties, without being a compound of those properties and some further matter

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Prime matter

Prime matter :: تعاليق

Prime matter

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