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    Question # 10

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    Geo Angelo Astraquillo
    The document discusses two types of change in Aristotle's account: accidental change which involves a substance changing, and substantial change which involves matter taking on a new form. It raises the problem that if primary substances are compounds of matter and form, how can they remain basic individuals as Aristotle claims in the Categories.

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    Question # 10

    Uploaded by

    Geo Angelo Astraquillo
    12 views1 page
    The document discusses two types of change in Aristotle's account: accidental change which involves a substance changing, and substantial change which involves matter taking on a new form. It raises the problem that if primary substances are compounds of matter and form, how can they remain basic individuals as Aristotle claims in the Categories.

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    question # 10

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    The document discusses two types of change in Aristotle's account: accidental change which involves a substance changing, and substantial change which involves matter taking on a new form. It raises the problem that if primary substances are compounds of matter and form, how can they remain basic individuals as Aristotle claims in the Categories.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    12 views1 page

    Question # 10

    Uploaded by

    Geo Angelo Astraquillo
    The document discusses two types of change in Aristotle's account: accidental change which involves a substance changing, and substantial change which involves matter taking on a new form. It raises the problem that if primary substances are compounds of matter and form, how can they remain basic individuals as Aristotle claims in the Categories.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 1

    Accidental vs.

    Substantial Change
    Aristotle notes (190b11) an important feature of change: that which comes to be is
    always composite. For example, what comes-to-be is the musical man. But what about
    Aristotle’s other case? What is the statue a compound of? Aristotle’s
    answer: matter and form.

    We thus see two different kinds of change in Aristotle’s account:

    a. Accidental change (e.g., alteration of a substance): the subject is a substance.


    E.g., the man becomes a musician, Socrates becomes pale.
    b. Substantial change (generation and destruction of a substance): the subject
    is matter, the form is the form of a substance. E.g., the bronze becomes a statue, a
    seed becomes a tiger, an acorn becomes an oak tree.

    Accidental change can be accommodated within the world of the Categories, a world in


    which primary substances (individual horses, trees, etc.) are the basic individuals. But what
    of substantial change? This seems to threaten the ontology of the Categories. For
    substantial change requires a subject (viz., matter) that seems more basic than the
    individual plants and animals of theCategories.

    But this creates a problem: if the primary substances of the Categories turn out to be


    compounds of form and matter, how can they be the basic ingredients of the world?

    Example: a builder is not a basic individual, for Aristotle. A builder is a compound of a


    subject and a property: a substance (a human being) and a characteristic (s)he happens to
    have—the knowledge of building. How, then, can a tiger retain its status as a basic
    individual? After all, it, too, is a compound of a subject and a property: matter and a form
    that supervenes, a form that the matter happens to have.

    This problem is not addressed in the Physics, but it is one that Aristotle returns to in
    the Metaphysics. His answer, as we shall see, is not altogether clear.

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