Chapter 7: Aristotle's Physics: natures vs. forms (natural things are like "the snub")
Random number: 44
Aristotle classifies change into four different types. The types of change are locomotion (change in location), growth (the changing in size of an object), alteration (the changing in quality of an object), and decay (the death of an object). For Aristotle, an object with nature is an object which has a principle of motion internal to itself. For instance, fire tends to rise (change in location) due to its intrinsic lightness, a principle internal to itself. Examples of natural objects would be simple bodies, such as earth, fire, air and water, and living bodies, such as animals and plants. Objects that aren’t natural, such as a bed, have no principle of motion intrinsic to themselves. The principles of motion the bed does possess it possesses coincidentally; the bed has the ability to behave like wood only because it is made from wood.
After having categorized the types of change and defined what makes something natural, Aristotle goes on to consider whether nature is matter. The argument, attributed to Antiphon, states that the form of an object is merely a coincidence, and that the matter is the nature of the object. For instance, if you were to bury a bed, and the bed were to rot and start sprouting, you would end up with more wood, not more beds. In this case, it would be ridiculous to say that the form of the bed is the nature of the bed, because the form of the bed seems to not have anything to do with the bed in essence. (It might seem strange that Aristotle uses this example of the ‘nature of a bed’, because a bed is not a natural body, and has no such nature. However, we can rationalise this argument by noting that Aristotle might simply be making examples out of unnatural objects because they are easier to talk about). In the same way, we can say that the nature of bones and wood is earth, and bronze and gold is water. This then explains why some Ancient greek philosophers said that fire or earth or air or water is the nature of all things, because they believed that everything came from one or many of these ‘first principles’, and hence that this matter must constitute the nature of natural bodies. It is interesting to note however that Aristotle does not offer any of his own arguments as to why nature should be matter, but only quotes the arguments of philosophers such as Antiphon. However, he goes on in later passages to state that a student of nature will study both matter and form, so it seems that he agrees with the endoxa (reputable opinions) that he has presented.
Aristotle believes that form also is a big part of nature. For Aristotle, matter in an object is potentiality; for instance the wood and the nails making up a bed are the potentiality of being the bed. The form of an object is actuality, so that an object requires both matter and form to exist. In the example of a bone then, what is potentially a bone (the matter of the bone: calcium, marrow, carbon) does not behave as a bone does, and therefore does not have the nature of a bone. Therefore the nature of the bone must lie not only in the matter of the bone, but must also be in the form of the bone. Furthermore, even though you might argue that a bed produces wood, and hence the nature of a bed is not the form of the bed but the matter, Aristotle raises a counterargument: a human man produces man through reproduction, and so evidently nature cannot simply be matter alone (for if nature were matter alone, then we should expect that man should produce a bundle of skin, muscle and organs in no particular organization). Finally, Aristotle argues that nature can be viewed as the process of growth, and that every object is not said to grow into matter, rather they start from the matter and grow into the form, hence the form is the nature. Hence, Aristotle offers various different arguments as to why form should be considered as a nature of natural bodies.
Addressing which of the two, nature as form or nature as matter, is more worthy of study is according to Aristotle a puzzle. It might seem at first inspection that one of the two might turn out to be outrightly more worthy of study than the other, so much so that we should do away with the latter and stick with the former. However, Aristotle states that just as we would study the essence of snubness by considering the matter (nose) and the form (snubness), so also with nature we must study both the matter and the form; because the nature is neither independent of the matter constituting the object nor can it solely based on the matter alone. Aristotle goes on to argue however that matter in natural objects exists for the sake of form. Aristotle uses a simile of a boat builder in his argument, for there are two crafts central to boat building, the art of the boat-builder who knows what sorts of wood to use and how to sculpt this wood, and the art of the art of the pilot who knows the form that the rudder should have. Evidently however, the former art is subservient to the latter, in other words, the art pertaining to the form of the boat dictates the art pertaining to the matter of the boat. In this sense, form is the end of matter. For this reason, the study of form as a nature should be considered more important than the study of matter as a nature, though both are necessary.