Actuality and Potentiality

In order to understand reality as a whole, one of the most important distinctions is

the distinction between potentiality and actuality.
- Spending some time with this distinction is critical to understanding Thomas Aquinas's
arguments for the existence of God.
- So let us take a moment to consider this distinction in some detail.
- One of the basic puzzles that confronted ancient philosophers was the puzzle about
change.
- How can the water in a river always be flowing by, and yet it remains the same river?
- Things are being and becoming, but how can they both be what they are and become
something that they're not?
By wrestling with these and various puzzles regarding change, Aristotle discovered the
distinction between act and potency or actuality and potentiality.
The things around us in nature are not only what they actually are, but also what they can be.
It is easy to see the distinction.
● A pot of water on the stove is actually cold and potentially hot, but once it is on a hot
burner for some time, the potentiality to be hot becomes actualized. And when the water
is actually hot, it is potentially cold.
● Aristotle realized that all things in nature are a blend of act and potency like the water.
○ For example, an acorn is potentially a fully grown oak tree, a child is potentially a
grown man, and the water in the ocean is potentially a rain cloud over land.
● Aristotle realized that change consists of the actualization of the potentiality latent within
the things of nature.
○ The acorn grows into an actually tall tree.
○ The child grows into a mature adult man, walking and talking.
○ And the water in the ocean evaporates and condenses into a rain cloud, which
then showers rain upon the land.
● All of these changes are the realizations of the potentialities hidden within things.
● When we think of change as the actualization of potential, a question confronts us.
● Why does the potentiality of things become actual?
After all, potentiality does not realize itself on its own.
Pondering this question led Aristotle to the conclusion that there must be some ultimate
source of change.
● The ultimate source of change must be completely actual and not have any potentiality
in it, but it is responsible for the realization of potentiality in everything else.
● The ultimate source of change, he called the unmoved mover or God.

Essence and Existence

The world around us is populated by distinct, natural kinds of things. It's a simple but significant
truth.
- Over the course of our lives, we encounter a variety of different things. It's just
common-sensical.
- There are human beings, kangaroos, cactuses, stars, et cetera.
- What is more, this diversity of kinds is irreducible.
 - We can't reduce it all down to something unique.

Some of the pre-Socratic philosophers tried to explain everything as elemental fire or water, as if
there were only one element underneath everything.

Many contemporary scientists try to explain everything as ordered bundles of chemicals,

molecules, and atoms.
- One problem with this is that it cuts against the grain of common sense.
- The ordinary living beings we see around us are holistic and unified and don't seem
reducible to mere bundles of atoms.
- Another problem is that these material building blocks themselves are diverse.
- There just are distinct atomic particles and chemical elements.
How do we account for this complexity?
● The attempt to reduce everything to only one kind of thing is ill-fated, and it doesn't work.
Let's call every natural kind, like a human being or an oak tree, a kind of essence.
● Each essence has material parts, but is also a holistic form.
● The material parts are organized and made intelligible by the form.
What do I mean by this?
- Take the material organs of a human being, like the heart, lungs, liver, and brain.
- These organs all function as the organs of a whole animal, as dynamic parts of a living
being.
- The kind of thing that the human being is gives order to all these parts, and they have
their function in view of the purposes or functions of the whole human being.
- So for example, we breathe oxygen, or we have sensations, we digest food, and so
forth,
- in view of a host of more important human activities, like reasoning, friendship, family
life, prayer.
- The organs all participate in the natural form, in this case being human, which exerts
influence from the top down as an organizing principle from within.
- We see this at the lower levels within ourselves, as well.
- So for example, in organs.
- The gallbladder consists of various cells, but the cells are organized by the
gallbladder's nature and function.

- We can predict their behavior based on the fact that they are cells of this particular kind
of organ.
- The larger point is that in all the things we experience, there's both form and matter.
- Reality is not simply built up from the bottom. It's also influenced from the top down.
- The parts of things have their place within the whole.
- This is what we denote when we speak of material essences.

The essence gets at what the thing is as a form-matter composite.

When we think about what a thing is essentially, we think about its distinctive nature, or formal
features, and about its typical material constitution.
 - So we think about both form and matter. And once we have established the notion of
essences, we can begin to account for how things differ.
- The nature of the kangaroo is different from the nature of the human being, or the
star.
- The nature of the gallbladder is different from the nature of the heart, or the liver.
- The parts of things are arranged differently because they are parts of different
things for different ends.
- The human heart is quite different from the stem of a plant.
It is the nature of a given thing that gives shape and definition to the material parts.
Now, once we've acknowledged that there really are distinct kinds of things, different essences
you might say, in the world around us, we could also begin to think about the presence of
something common within all of them, something common to stars, and human beings, and
kangaroos.
- They're all united by the fact that they all exist.
- They all have being.
A good summary statement is that essence answers to what a thing is, while existence, or
being, answers to that it is, or the fact that it exists. Notice that this means that all these diverse
kinds of things all exist.
- Existence is something common to all the various kinds of things that are, no matter how
different they are.
- This shows us that the philosophical mystery of our nature, our essence, is distinct from
the mystery of our existence. They’re related topics, but they’re also distinct.

Substance and Accidents

Aristotle offers us an account of reality as a whole.

- In order to understand his account of reality as a whole, we need to understand what he
means by the terms substance and accident.
So let's take a moment to consider these terms.
● It is important to pause with these terms since they have quite different meanings in their
philosophical and Thomistic usage than they have in ordinary language.
● In ordinary language, a substance is any sample of stuff.
○ Students in a chemistry lab, for example, will speak of various substances that
they're weighing or burning or experimenting with.
○ In ordinary language, accidents are events that happen unintentionally or by
chance, such as falling down the stairs or being rear-ended on the way to work.
○ But these terms, substance and accident, have completely different meanings in
the philosophical tradition and especially in the usage of Thomas Aquinas.
● For Saint Thomas, substance may refer either to a particular existing thing or to the
substantial form of a particular existing thing.
○ A particular dog such as Fido is a substance, but so too is the form of Fido or his
essence, which is that of being a dog. That too is called a substance.
 ○ We understand substance by contrast with accidents.
○ Accidents are the features or traits of substances, such as the weight or color or
actions of a thing.
○ Fido, for example, may weigh 10 pounds and have brown fur and bark.
○ These are accidents of Fido.
● According to Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas follows him in this, accidents do not exist
except in various substances, and substances are the realities underlying and displaying
all those accidents.
○ They're called substances because they stand under--substand--accidents.
○ Substances do not exist in other things but exist on their own, but it is very
important to qualify this up front.
○ We are not saying that substances exist independently of God.
○ Aquinas has a metaphysics of participation which tells us that all substances
other than God participate in the very being of God.
○ When it is said that substances are independent or exist on their own, this is said
by contrast to accidents.
○ It is not said with reference to God.
● It is also important to note that for Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, substances are not
inert or static entities.
● Whatever exists is active, and the more being a thing has, the more active it is.
○ Accidents are active and substances are even more active than the accidents
they underlie.
● The world is not a place of static individuals, but of active realities.
● Thomas Aquinas thought that all of reality could be classified according to the distinction
between substance and accident.
● Whatever exists is either a substance or an accident.
○ Aristotle found nine kinds of accidents in things: qualities, quantities, relations,
time, place, action, passion, position and habit.
○ The substances and these nine accidents, together, are famously called the 10
categories.
○ Every finite being whatsoever belongs to one of these 10 categories, but God
transcends them all since he is infinite.

Form and Matter

What is truth?
What is love?
What is justice?
- When asking these questions, philosophers are asking for the essences of things or
more simply, what they are.
- The ancient philosopher Plato called the answers to these questions, the forms.
- And he held the view that the forms exist in reality, separately, from the particular things
around us in nature.
Aristotle also held that the forms are real, but he held that the forms exist in the things
themselves around us in nature.
- In other words, Aristotle thought that things have essences, or natures, or forms which
make them to be what they are.
- The form of a particular German Shepherd, for example, makes him to be a
German Shepherd.
- All things of nature have their forms or essences, and because they have their
forms, they fall into the assortment of natural kinds that we observe around us in
nature.
Aristotle also realized that particular things are composed of matter.
● For Aristotle, matter is not just atoms, or particles, or tiny units as we are accustomed to
think of it today.
● For Aristotle, matter is the universal substratum of pure potentiality that does not exist on
its own except in union with a form, which makes it to be this or that kind of matter.
● All the things of nature are composed of matter and form, and this is what is called
hylomorphism.
○ Hylomorphism is a view about the constitution of the things of nature.
● The distinction between matter and form is related to the distinction between act and
potency.
● The form of a thing is its act and the matter of a thing is its potency.
● Just as things are a blend of potency and act, so they are a blend or a composition of
matter and form.
● This holds at all levels of analysis down to the most fundamental units, which Aristotle
called elements.
○ Even the elements are composed of matter and form.
○ It is the forms of things that make them to be intelligible, and when we ask what
they are, it is their form that answers our question.

Substantial Form

In his ever-present work of creation god gives being to many different particular things and
many different kinds of things he gives being to visible things like cats and dogs grass flowers
trees sun and moon human beings and a host of other things
● he also gives being to invisible things above us
● like the angels and invisible things
● Below us like subatomic particles
● the evidence of common sense tells us that things of our everyday experience are real
and come in many different natural kinds
● whenever we're talking about a particular thing in nature that is real and belongs to a
specific natural kind and is irreducible to anything else aristotle and aquinas call that
particular thing a primary substance
○ in his work of creation god is now giving being to a world of a bewildering variety
of primary substances
 ○ some are material others immaterial some are very big others medium in size
and still others very small what all the primary substances have in common and
what makes each of them irreducible to anything else is their substantial form
○ thanks to their substantial forms constituting many primary substances large
medium and small
○ it cannot be said that what is really real is just particles and forces and that
everything else is reducible to them
○ rather what is really real is you and me cats and dogs grass flowers trees and
perhaps particles and forces too depending on how one understands them
● nature is a wonderful array of mysteries existing at many levels of perfection all
displaying the wisdom of god

● god gives each really existing thing or primary substance its substantial form
● and its substantial form is what makes a thing to be what it is
○ to be one and to be intelligible

let us consider each of these points

- First substantial form makes a thing to be what it is

- the substantial form of a cat for example is what makes it to be a cat. a cat is an
orderly whole with different biological systems such as a cardiac system,
digestive system, nervous system and more
- in order for these systems to work the cat needs parts not just any kind of parts
but certain kinds of parts
- the cardiac system needs a heart and blood
- the digestive system needs a throat and stomach
- and the nervous system needs a brain and spine and more
- the substantial form of the cat is the order of the whole organism but that order
includes the order of all the subsystems and all the parts of all the subsystems,
and all the parts of all the parts
- but the substantial form is not just the order or plan of a thing it is also the inner
source of all the activities or operations of the whole all the systems and all the
parts
- substantial form is the source of the beating heart the firing nerves and the active
digestion going on
- the substantial form fixes the developmental sequence of the whole cat from
beginning to end and the substantial form is the very being at work of the cat
- driving it on in its development to its end that is to full development and operation
in the optimal state of flourishing
- all of this goes into the little expression that substantial form makes a thing to be
what it is
but let us focus on one point in particular
● the substantial form of the whole cat is what accounts for the parts and the parts of the
parts all the way down and the activities or operations of the parts
 ● philosophers have come to call this top down or whole to part explanation
● the claim is that in a primary substance the form of the hole accounts for the parts not
the parts for the whole
● those who say the parts account for the whole tell a bottom-up explanation of what
makes the cat to be what it is and the bottom-up stories often imply that the cat does not
really exist it is not a primary substance but reducible to something else it is just particles
or physical things and forces at work invisibly in the cat and the form of a cat is really an
accidental form of the particles
○ when bottom-up explanations are absolutized across all phenomena one
implication is that all the things of ordinary experience and daily life are not really
real they are not primary substance
○ what is really real we often hear is rather invisible things and forces at the bottom
of the world and science alone can tell us what those are
○ but is that true does science obligate us to say that
■ no modern science does not rule out substantial form in the things of daily
life or top-down interpretations of scientific principles and findings
■ in fact in many ways it is more consistent with science to say that a great
many ordinary things have substantial forms and the forms of holes
account for their parts and processes rather than the other way around
what is
■ really real is you and me and our cats dogs and similar things
■ science does not deny that but welcomes it
■ it explains better for example a wide array of emergent properties and
avoids undermining the general reliability of ordinary experience and
common sense on which all science is based

● second substantial form makes a thing to be one in a special way

- let us compare a cat with a car a car has many parts but when the whole car
loses its form as a car the parts continue to be what they are
- the leather in the seat continues to be leather
- the glass in the windshield continues to be glass
- and the rubber in the tires continues to be rubber
- a cat too has many parts but when the whole cat loses its form as a cat the parts
do not continue to be what they are
- the tail is no longer a tail
- the eyes no longer eyes
- and the heart no longer a heart
-
a severed finger aristotle says is not a finger except equivocally so called what he means is that
although we call a severed finger by the name of finger it is not really a finger because a finger
is essentially a living member of a living body and the severed thing is neither a member nor
living
 ● so too with all the parts of a cat that has lost its substantial form, though we may call
them a tail eyes and, a heart for a while they are really different in kind from what they
were in the cat
● they no longer participate in a living organism, and therefore are no longer living in any
way
● we can see now that the form of a car is accidental and makes its parts to be
coordinated
● but not to be what each one is, the form of a cat is substantial and makes its parts to be
not only coordinated but to be what each one is
● substantial form gives primary substances, an irreducible unity and because of
substantial form all the parts of primary substances are essentially participants of a
whole that is really real

● Finally substantial form makes a thing to be intelligible understanding essentially

consists of reading the forms of things in nature
○ it is like when a person is engrossed in reading a novel
○ the reader becomes the book so to speak and is mentally living the story
○ human beings who study the things of nature become engrossed in reading the
book of nature and mentally live the very forms of things in nature
○ if thought is one thing and things are another, then is there really knowledge

Aristotle realized that for there to be knowledge of a thing

- the form in the thing and the form in our mind must be one in the same form and that is
what knowledge is, oneness of mind and things according to their form
- in his goodness god gives being to a world of things having substantial forms
- so that we may know the forms of things in nature
- and ultimately so that we might know him and love him and marvel at his wisdom forever