The History of "Hylomorphism"

Author(s): Gideon Manning

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 74, No. 2 (April 2013), pp. 173-187
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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 The History of "Hylomorphism"

Gideon Manning

"Hylomorphism" will be unfamiliar to the casual reader of the history of

science and philosophy, but among scholars working in these fields it is
now the preferred term when referring to the Aristotelian doctrine of matter
and form.1 It is important to acknowledge, however, that although a single
term has achieved this preferred status, there is likely no pure or singular
doctrine answering to "hylomorphism." This will be apparent when we
recall that Aristotle put matter and form to many uses.2 He differentiated
the sublunary world from the celestial one by noting that celestial objects

I would like to thank Peter Adamson, Roger Ariew, Michael Edwards, Sinikki Elvington,
Mordechai Feingold, Daniel Garber, Gary Hatfield, Kristine Haugen, Marita Huebner,
Brad Inwood, Melissa Pastrana, Mac Pigman, Robert Richards, Marius Stan, and Joan
Steigerwald. I am especially grateful to the Journal's two anonymous referees.
1 "Hylo" is a compounding form of hyle, meaning matter, and morphe means form. Com-
pound words of the Greek first declension do not use the genitive of the first word.
Sometimes the long alpha or eta is retained; at others, by analogy to the second declen-
sion, an omicron is substituted. So either "hylomorphism" or "hylemorphism" would be
acceptable Greek. As a result, one frequently finds not "hylomorphism" but "hylemorph-
ism," as, for example, throughout The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed.
Charles B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), The Cambridge
History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy , 2 vols., ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and The Cambridge History of Science,
Volume 3: Early Modern Science, ed. Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006). In French, too, "Phylomorphisme" and "l'hylemor-
phisme" are equally common, although "Phylomorphisme" appears first in the nine-
teenth century.
2 What follows above is an abbreviated version of the list of uses compiled in G. E. R.
Lloyd, Aristotle : The Growth & Structure of his Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1968), 291-2.

Copyright €> by Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 74, Number 2 (April 2013)

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

had forms, but no earthly matter.3 For living things he identified their form
as their soul and their body as their matter.4 Among the faculties of the
soul, he understood sensation to result when a form was received by the
sense organs without any concomitant matter from the object being per-
ceived.5 Pure thought too he characterized in terms of a form being avail-
able to the intellect without the need of a bodily organ, and so without
matter.6 In his analysis of change he stipulated that if, contrary to Parmen-
ides, the changing world we experience is more than a mere appearance,
then matter and form must exist.7 This meant that matter and form were

among the basic concepts needed to understand change, which Aristotle

described as a transition in matter from a state of privation to the presence
of a specific form, or vice versa. Difficult as it may be to imagine now, even
change of place was conceived in this way: the "natural place" sought by a
falling body was determined by its form.8
In this paper, I do not wish simply to reject the use of "hylomorphism"
because the term, as it is used in contemporary scholarship, purports to
represent a single view of matter and form. Idealizations fill a necessary role
in simplifying scholarship and there is no reason to persecute them for
doing so. Instead, I want to highlight and understand the particular risk
attendant to the use of "hylomorphism" as a simplification not only of
Aristotle, but also the Peripatetics and those responding to them. For it is
especially in contexts where comparisons between historical epochs or self-
professed innovators, and the traditional views they reject, that "hylomor-
phism" is likely to mislead us.
The route I propose to take is a genetic one, as the history of "hylomor-
phism" is not at all obvious. Neither the word nor its cognates appear in
early modern dictionaries such as Rodolphus Goclenius's Lexicon Philo-
sophicum (1613), Charles du Cange's Glossarium mediae et infimae latini-
tatis (1678), Jean Nicot's Thresor de la langue française (1606), Jean-

3 All citations of Aristotle will include the Latin title and the Bekker pages, e.g., as De
cáelo I.2.269bl8-270b31 in the present case.
4 See, for example, De anima II.1.412al9-28. The significance of the soul is also dis-
cussed at De partibus animalium I.5.645bl5-28.
5 See, for example, De anima II. 12.424a 17.
6 See De anima III.4-5 and De generatione animalium II.3.736b22.
7 See Physics I and II. For a reconstruction of Parmenides's position see Jonathan Barnes,
The Presocratic Philosophers (New York: Routledge, 1996 [1979]), 155-99. For further
details of Aristotle's response to Parmenides see Jonathan Lear, Aristotle : The Desire
to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 55-83; cf. Christopher
Shields, Aristotle (New York: Routledge, 2007), 49-64 and 196-203.
8 See, for example, De cáelo IV.3.310a31-310a35.

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 Manning ♦ The History of "Hylomorphism"

François Férauďs Dictionaire [sic] critique de la langue française (1787-

88), Emile Littré's Dictionnaire de la langue française (1872-77) or any
edition of the Dictionnaire de L'Académie française .9 The term is not found
in German dictionaries - such as the Grimms' Deutsche Wörterbuch or pre-
1883 editions of Friedrich Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deut-
schen Sprache - or Italian dictionaries, including Ottorino Pianigiani's
Vocabolario etimologico della lingua italiana (1907) and Manilo Cortel-
azzo and Paolo Zolli's Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana (1989).
Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) lacks an entry, and the revised
1886 edition fails to remedy the omission. A search of Samuel Johnson's
Dictionary of the English Language (1755) is similarly unhelpful. Thus, in
spite of its now being a staple of historical scholarship, used to distinguish
Aristotle and his Peripatetic followers from competing traditions in ancient,
medieval, Renaissance, and even early modern science and philosophy, the
exact origin of the term "hylomorphism" remains a mystery.
By unraveling the history of "hylomorphism," I will explain how the
term's origin has handicapped and misled early modernists in particular. I
will specifically show that the term "hylomorphism" first appeared in
English in 1860, though it was initially used to refer to materialism - the
view that the natural world is co-extensive with the material world and
material causes. Curiously lacking any connection to Aristotle, the first
appearance of "hylomorphism" does not shed any light on the current use
of the term. Instead, it was in the context of the Catholic Church's formal
revival of Thomism that, in the 1880s, "hylomorphism" began to refer to
Peripatetic views, ultimately spreading to historians of science and philoso-
phy in the twentieth century with the same Thomistic bias.
In what follows, I first detail the history of "hylomorphism" by locat-
ing its initial appearance and then identifying the moment when it began to
refer, as it does today, to the Peripatetic doctrines of matter and form. After
this I address the obstacles the term has created for scholars. I conclude
with the suggestion that historical work comparing epochs and specific
authors would benefit from using "hylomorphisms" or otherwise acknowl-
edging the diversity of views that constitute the Aristotelian tradition.
As with many questions of language use, a good place to begin is with
James A. H. Murray's A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles
(1901), which would later become the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
Although Murray's dictionary lacks a dedicated entry for "hylomorphism,"

9 All these dictionaries are searchable at http://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/diction

naires-dautrefois (last visited September 2010).

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

it lists "hylomorphism" among the compounds made from "hylo-." It also

cites evidence that the word first appeared in the late nineteenth century.10
The current OED preserves the 1901 entry of "hylo-" and, like its progeni-
tor, credits the British theologian James Martineau's A Study of Religion
(1888) with bringing "hylomorphism" into the English language. It also
offers the following definition: "the doctrine that primordial matter is the
First Cause of the universe."
Though informative, there are two deficiencies in the OED account
that ought to be corrected. First is the definition of "hylormorphism." A
New English Dictionary and the OED emphasize hyle but fail to account
for morphe. Martineau's A Study of Religion goes some way to explain this
emphasis. Contrasting " Anthropomorphism , B/omorphism, and Hylomor-
phism," Martineau attempted to "mark the differentia of . . . three theo-
ries" about the "universal cause of Nature."11 He believed there "are but
three forms under which it is possible to think of the ultimate or immanent
principle of the Universe - Mind, Life, [and] Matter." According to Marti-
neau's view, then, "anthropomorphism" refers to any theory of the universe
as coming from thought, while "biomorphism" refers to any theory that
emphasizes animistic growth as a cause. "Hylomorphism," by contrast,
appeals only to matter, which "mechanically shuffles into equilibrium."
Martineau's use of "hylomorphism" clearly emphasizes hyle , and Murray
and the OED simply follow his lead. But by sidelining morphe , their defi-
nition deprives hylomorphism of what is frequently thought to be its main
advantage: that it is neither a species of Cartesian style substance dualism
nor a straightforward materialism of the atomist variety. Regardless, the
suggestion that matter alone is the first cause of the universe, without any
role for form, will appear to the modern reader profoundly un-hylo mor-
phic; so too will Martineau's claim that hylomorphism involves a mechani-
cal shuffling. We obviously must look more carefully for the moment at
which "hylomorphism" came to refer to the Peripatetic's commitment to
matter and form.
The second deficiency in the accounts in A New English Dictionary

10J.A.H. Murray, An English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1901), 5: 494-95. Without providing original references, the nineteenth century is
also the date given in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie : "Der heute für diese
Doktrin gebräuchliche Ausdruck scheint erst gegen Ende des 19. Jh im Raum der Neu-
scholastik gebildt worden zu sein, findet sich jedenfalls im Anfang des 20. Jh. schon in
Titeln" (J. Ritter, ed., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie [Basel/Stuttgart:
Schwabe & Co., 1971-2007], 3: 1236).
11 James Martineau, A Study of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 1: 336-37.

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 Manning ♦ The History of "Hylomorphism"

and the OED is that Martineau is not the first to use "hylomorphism."
Rather, the term appears to have been coined in a translation done by Fred-
erica Rowan of a curious letter, written in German in 1818 by Friedrich
Schleiermacher to Friedrich Jacobi, though an oversight in the 1858 and
1860 editions of Schleiermacher's correspondence had the unfortunate con-
sequence of leaving the precise meaning of the word underdetermined. The
theological content of Schleiermacher's letter need not concern us here, but
the circumstances of its publication are worth describing in detail for the
light they shed on the history of the first appearance of "hylomorphism" in
English.
Schleiermacher's letter to Jacobi was first published in 1837, in the
short-lived journal Der Kirchenfreund für das nördliche Deutschland.12
(Precise numbers on the circulation of Der Kirchenfreund für das nördliche
Deutschland have proven difficult to find, although worldwide, for all years
of its publication run, only seven universities currently own copies of the
journal, suggesting that the 1837 reprint of the letter was not widely read.)
The letter was republished in the 1858 edition of Schleiermacher's corre-
spondence, which made it available to a broader readership. In 1858 the
relevant passage reads as follows:

Der Anthropomorphismus, oder lassen Sie mich sagen, der Ideom-

orphismus, ist aber unvermeidlich auf dem Gebiete der Dolmet-
schung des religioesen Gefuehls; ob der Hylomorphismus nicht
eben so unentbehrlich ist auf der Seite der Naturkunde, will ich
nicht entscheiden, weil ich zu wenig davon verstehe.13

Frederica Rowan's translation of this passage is given in the text below, but
it is essential to see the German to understand the history of "Hylomorphis-
mus." For what is most remarkable about the passage is that the 1858 edition
of Schleiermacher's correspondence, as well as the 1860 reprint, omit a par-
enthetical remark that Schleiermacher made to clarify his interest in "Hylo-
morphismus." This omission is particularly glaring given that the earlier 1837
version had included Schleiermacher's parenthetical explanation:

Der Anthropomorphismus, oder lassen Sie mich lieber sagen

Ideomorphismus, ist aber unvermeidlich auf dem Gebiete der Dol-

12 For a full account of the provenance of the 1818 letter, including its publication history,
see Martin Cordes, "Der Brief Schleiermachers an Jacobi: Ein Beitrag zu seiner Entsteh-
ung und Überlieferung" in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 68 (1971): 195-212.
13 F. D. E. Schleiermacher, Aus Schleiermacher's Leben (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1858), 2:
352.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

metschung des religiösen Gefühls; ob der Hylomorphismus (doch

möchte ich das ja nicht atomistisch genommen haben , sondern wie
es die lebendigste Physik mit sich bringt ) nicht eben so unentbehr-
lich ist auf der Seite der Naturkunde, will ich nicht entscheiden,
weil ich zu wenig davon verstehe.14

The parenthetical adds, "but I would not like to have [hylomorphismus]

taken atomistically, rather how it is implicated in the most living physics."
Schleiermacher's reference to the "lebendigste Physik," literally the "most
living physics," though one might translate it more idiomatically as the
"most organic" or "most animated physics," qualifies what he meant by
"Hylomorphismus." Unfortunately, his qualification would have been lost
on readers of the 1858 and 1860 editions of Schleiermacher's correspon-
dence. As a result, the "lebendigste Physik" played no part in the reception
of Schleiermacher's "Hylomorphismus."
Nevertheless, it is worth pausing to consider precisely what Schleier-
macher means by the "most living physics." What can be discerned from
the letter, at least initially, is that by "Ideomorphism" Schleiermacher seems
to mean "the form of ideas"; so when he questions whether "Hylomorphis-
mus" is needed in natural science he likely is asking about "the form of
matter." But this is not the form implicated in the matter-form thinking of
Aristotle. Rather, it is the form or structure assigned to atoms in an atomis-
tic physics. In his parenthetical remark, Schleiermacher is contrasting the
atomistic physics, which he rejects, with the "most living physics" to which
he subscribes. And he is specifically acknowledging to Jacobi his uncer-
tainty as to whether "the form of matter" so essential to an atomistic phys-
ics, with its lifeless matter, is essential to the "most living physics."
As for what the "most living physics" refers to, it is well documented
that Schleiermacher's natural scientific views were informed by the work of
Friedrich Schelling.15 In all likelihood the "most living physics" is a refer-

14 The 1837 letter is reproduced in Cordes, "Der Brief Schleiermachers an Jacobi";

emphasis added. I have used the German found in Cordes's essay and checked it against
the text in F. H. Jacobi, Aus F. H. Jacobi' s Nachlaß , 2 vols., ed. Rudolph Zoeppritz (Leip-
zig: Engelmann, 1869).
15 For Schleiermacher's scientific interests and his reliance on Schelling, see Frederick
Gregory, "Theology and the Sciences in the German Romantic Period," in Romanticism
and the Sciences , ed. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 69-81, 73; and Nature Lost ? Natural Science and German Theo-
logical Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 34-38.

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 Manning ♦ The History of "Hylomorphism"

enee to Schelling's idealistic conception of nature as a product of mind.16

Alternatively, it may be a reference to Schelling's identity theory and his
monistic view combining matter and life. Schelling, however, does not refer
to the "lebendigste Physik" in either his 1799 Erster Entwurf eines Systems
der Naturphilosophie or his 1800 System des transcendentalen Idealismus .
But these works do express an anti-Newtonian and, more tellingly, anti-
atomistic understanding of nature: the same view of nature endorsed by
Schleiermacher in his letter to Jacobi. Thus, even upon closer inspection of
the complete 1818 version of the letter cited above, "Hylomorphismus" is
not a reference to the Peripatetic doctrines of matter and form; and given
that the 1858 version of the letter omits the reference to the "lebendigste
Physik," there is no basis on which to interpret Schleiermacher's "Hylo-
morphismus" as referring to Peripatetic doctrines.
This is noteworthy because, as I mentioned earlier, the first appearance
of "hylomorphism" is tied to Schleiermacher's 1818 letter, albeit the 1858
version. Frederica Rowan's The Life of Schleiermacher (1860), refers to the
former, but treats the 1858 text cited above as authoritative. Rowan's
entirely adequate translation of the German reads:

Anthropomorphism, or let me rather say ideomorphism, is, how-

ever, unavoidable in regard to the interpretation of the religious
feeling: whether hylomorphism is not equally indispensable in
regard to natural science, I cannot undertake to determine, be-
cause I am not sufficiently acquainted with the subject.17

This passage along with the rest of the 1818 letter was thought important
enough by a reviewer for The Westminster Review that Rowan's translation
of the letter was reproduced almost in its entirety.18 Rowan's translation
predated Martineau's work by nearly three decades, but because Rowan
relied on the 1858 version of Schleiermacher's letter her translation suffers

16 For a brief but illuminating discussion of Schelling's philosophy, see R.-P. Horstmann,
"The early philosophy of Fitche and Schelling," in The Cambridge Companion to Ger-
man Idealism , ed. Karl Ameriks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 117-
40. A fuller account of Schelling's scientific views and their philosophical import can be
found in Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life : Science and Philosophy
in the Age of Goethe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
17 Frederica Rowan, The Life of Schleiermacher (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1860),
2: 283.
18 Anonymous, The Westminster Review 20 (1861): 27-29.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

from the same lack of specificity as her source.19 And although it is now
clear that the OED mistakenly credited Martineau instead of Rowan with
first using "hylomorphism," the meaning of "hylomorphism" in 1860 nev-
ertheless remains obscure. Consequently, in spite of all the sources dis-
cussed so far, we still do not know when "hylomporphism" came to refer
to the Peripatetic's account of matter and form.
The answer can be found two decades later as part of the Catholic
Church's conservative response to events in the late nineteenth century.
Begun by Pope Pius IX with his Syllabus Errorum (1864), the Church's
response to the errors of the modern age continued with growing urgency
as it became clear that the Pope and Papal State were on the losing end of
a battle with secular political powers, especially in Italy. Modern science
was also viewed as a threat by the Church during this period. In 1878 Pius
IX's successor, Pope Leo XIII, issued his encyclical Aeterni Patris , declaring
in paragraph thirty that it was the "grossest injustice" to claim that "our
philosophy . . . opposed the advance and development of natural science."20
Meant to insulate the Church from any accusations that science and reli-
gion were incompatible, the Aeterni Patris even more clearly directed all
Catholics henceforth to follow the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas. "Our first
and most cherished idea," concludes paragraph twenty-six of the Aeterni
Patris , "is that you should all furnish to studious youth a generous and
copious supply of those purest streams of wisdom flowing inexhaustibly
from the precious fountainhead of the Angelic Doctor [Thomas Aquinas]."
Thus, an important challenge facing the Church's defenders was to show
that Thomism and modern science were compatible.
Finally, we come to one such defender, the prominent nineteenth-
century German Jesuit Tilmann Pesch.21 It was Pesch who, in 1877, first

19 The same is true of François Bonifas's La doctrine de la rédemption dans Schleier-

macher : "L'anthropomorphisme - que j'appellerais plus volontiers idéomorphisme, - est
inévitable, je le reconnais, lorsqu'il s'agit de traduire en langage humain le sentiment
religieux; je ne déciderai pas la question de savoir si V hylomorphisme est aussi inévitable
sur le terrain des sciences naturelles" (F. Bonifas, La doctrine de la rédemption dans
Schleiermacher [Paris: C. Meyrueis, 1865], 83).
20 1 have used the translation available at http://vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/
documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_0408 1879_aeterni-patris_en.html (last visited April 2012). For
more on the historical context of the Aeterni Patris , see Roger Aubert, "Le contexte
historique et les motivations doctrinales de l'encyclique 'Aeterni Patris'" in Tommaso
d'Aquino nel I Centenario dell'enciclica ' Aeterni Patris ', ed. B. d'Amore (Rome: Societa'
Internazionale Tommaso d'Aquino, 1981), 15-48.
21 Pesch's biography can be found in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. C. G. Herbermann
et al. (New York: Robert Appleton Company), 11: 739-40 and, with slight variation
mentioning the importance of the Aeterni Patris , in The Catholic University of America,
New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), 11: 195. For a full list of

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 Manning ♦ The History of "Hylomorphism"

referred to "scholastische Hylomorphismus."22 But his work prior to the

Aeterni Patris appears to have had little effect. Instead, it is from Pesch's
1880 Institutiones Philosophiae Naturalis - the first volume in a series
titled Philosophia Lacensis taking up the cause of Thomism and published
by the Jesuits of Maria-Laach - that "hylomorphism," as we still use it
today, derives.23 So influential was Pesch's work that Joseph Louis Perrier
would later describe it as part of "the most important contribution of Ger-
many to Scholastic philosophy since the days of Kleutgen and Stökl," both
of whom were among the earliest founders of Neo-Scholasticism.24
In part four of Pesch's Institutiones he expressed his misgivings about
both empiricism - with its overreliance on the material world - and the
claims of modern science, especially when they were at odds with orthodox
Church doctrine. Where the achievements of modern science were undeni-

able, however, Pesch proceeded to assimilate science into what he called

Thomas's " systema hylomorphicum He summarized his position with the
following four claims: 1) the basic commitments of the systema hylomor-
phicum are "absolutely certain"; 2) its "immediate consequences" are
equally certain for "philosophical reasons"; 3) it is the best hypothesis for
explaining "chemical change"; and 4) we can and should substitute the
"observations" of modern scientists for those "inexact conjectures" offered
by medieval doctors.25
Although Pesch did not actually use "hylomorphism" in the Institu-
tiones - he wrote in Latin and used the adjective "hylomorphic" - reviewers
of his book made use of "hylomorphism" when discussing the systema
hylomorphicum . A particularly scathing rejoinder appeared in the journal
Mind , but more favorably inclined Catholic publications praised the sys-

Pesch's major publications, several of which are still available today, see J. L. Perrier,
The Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1909), 307-8.
22 Tilmann Pesch, "Die Teleologie in der mittelalterlichen Naturphilosophie," Stimmen
aus Maria-Laach (1877): 523.
23 Tilmann Pesch, Institutiones Philosophiae Naturalis secundum principia S. Thomae
Aquinatis (Friburgi: Herder, 1880).
24 Perrier, The Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century , 197.
25 "Thesis: Systema hylomorphicum vel physicum, 1 ad capita primaria quod attinet,
tamquam omnino certum admitti debet; 2 certum etiam in iis est, quae proxime ex illis
consequuntur et solis innixa sunt philosophicis rationibus, 3 ad mutationes chimicas
explicandas adhibitum pro ea, qua haec nostra aetas pollet, rerum naturalium peritia, etsi
non omni ex parte certum, tarnen hypothesis omnium optima est; 4 ad facta, quibus
nititur quod spectat, sine systematis detrimento ea, quae recte a recentioribus doctoribus
observata sunt, iliis [sic] substituuntur, quae a veteribus minus accurate conjiciebantur"
(Pesch, institutiones , 315).

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

tema hylomorphicum and Pesch's account of Thomism.26 The Dublin

Review , which had been founded to promote Catholic doctrine in the nine-
teenth century, is a case in point:

The space allowed to us renders it utterly impossible to point out

the more positive theses of Father Pesch. But there is one point
we wish to bring into due prominence - viz., his comments on the
several systems for dealing with . . . corporeal substances . . .
[where he] establishes the hylomorphical [sic] system held by St.
Thomas.27

Additional reviews of Pesch's Institutiones appeared after a slightly modi-

fied second edition was published in 1897. The Month: A Catholic Maga-
zine summarized the work as follows: "It differs in no point of doctrine
from the first edition. . . . [Volume one] contains theses dealing with the
false systems of dynamists and others respecting the constitution of bodies
and establishing the scholastic doctrine of hylomorphism."28 By 1897
"hylomorphism" was being used without qualification or explanation,
referring simply to "the scholastic doctrine."
There is additional evidence that "hylomorphism" came into wide use
in the years between the two editions of Pesch's work and that orthodox
Catholic doctrine in particular embraced the Thomistic provenance of
"hylomorphism" between 1880 and 1897. Notable here is Thomas Quen-
tin Fleming's Thomist-inclined Hylomorphism of Thought-Being from
1888. This was the first book to use "hylomorphism" or any of its cognates
in a title, something that did not go unnoticed. The reviewer for The Dublin
Review noted of Fleming's work, "Many, no doubt, on hearing the title of
this book will wonder what 'hylomorphism' means but those who have
studied Scholastic theory of 'matter and form' will understand that 'hylo-
morphism' denotes the formation of a compound from two principles, one
active, the other passive."29 Judging from this review, the "Scholastic theory
of 'matter and form,' " which had been well known since the Middle Ages,
was considered common knowledge in 1888, but the label "hylomorph-
ism" was still novel. In 1897, however, the same year the review of Pesch's

26 T. Davidson, "Review of Institutiones Philosopbiae Naturalis secundum principia S.

Thomae Aquinatis Mind 1 (1882): 424-27.
27 Anonymous, The Dublin Review 5 (1881): 236.
28 Anonymous, The Month : A Catholic Magazine 90 (1897): 332.
29 Anonymous, The Dublin Review 20 (1888): 457.

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 Manning ♦ The History of " Hylomorphism "

work in The Month: A Catholic Magazine appeared, Anton Michelitz used

the German cognate of "hylomorphism" in his Atomismus , Hylemorphis-
mus und Naturwissenschaft without explanation, arguing, as Pesch had in
1880, that the details of modern chemistry were consistent with the Scho-
lastic doctrine of matter and form. A final testament to Pesch's success in

influencing discussions of matter and form can be glimpsed in the highly

successful Traité élémentaire de philosophie written by Cardinal Mercier
and the Professors of the Higher Institute at Louvain. Originally composed
in 1906 and translated into four "of the European languages" within a
decade, the 1916 English translation declares that "all the great thinkers of
antiquity and the Middle Ages believed material substance to be a com-
pound of two substantial principles, primary matter and substantial form -
a theory now often called hylomorphism ."30 By the end of the nineteenth
century "hylomorphism" and its cognates had become an established part
of the Neo-scholastic vocabulary when referring to Peripatetic doctrines of
matter and form.

We now know when "hylomorphism" first appeared in English -

1860 - and we know it began to refer to the Peripatetic doctrines of matter
and form in the 1880s. Thus, in spite of its ubiquitous use among historians
of science and philosophy today, we also know that neither the word "hylo-
morphism" nor the compound from which it derives was used by Aristotle,
the ancient or medieval commentators, or early modern natural philoso-
phers. This is worth remembering, for the use of "hylomorphism" implies
the existence of a single doctrine spanning these many figures and time
periods - this is made explicit in the passage quoted from the translation of
the Traité élémentaire de philosophie . But also recall that the word was
coined to refer to "the scholastic doctrine" associated with Thomism and

was meant as an alternative, really the alternative, to secular and scientific

trends in the nineteenth century. These trends and the pressures felt in the
Catholic Church left little room to acknowledge that there may not be a
singular doctrine shared by Aristotle, Aquinas, and other scientists and phi-
losophers.
Yet to insist upon a singular doctrine of matter and form is to ignore
the diversity of views held by the Peripatetics and the layers upon layers of
commentary that created the Aristotelian tradition beginning in the third

30 Cardinal Mercier et al., A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy , trans. T. L. Parker

and S. A. Parker (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1916), 1: vii and 307;
respectively.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

century ad with Alexander of Aphrodisias.31 I began this paper by listing

just a few of Aristotle's many uses of matter and form, but the diversity
and even disagreements among the Peripatetics is even more pronounced.
Consider just the early disagreements over whether "prime matter" -
matter wholly devoid of form - was necessary to explain substantial
change. Many of the commentators argued that in the generation of a new
substance there must exist some matter that stands ready to receive a form.
To deny the existence of such matter was to compromise Aristotle's analysis
of change, or so claimed prime matter's defenders.32 The fact th; t Aristotle
never explicitly or consistently endorsed the existence of prime matter effec-
tively guaranteed that disputes over its existence could not be settled. The
early commentators also disagreed about the separate existence of some
"substantial forms" - forms without matter - that would be eternal and
unchanging; in a sense, the antithesis of prime matter. These disputes inter-
ested not only Alexander, an early proponent of prime matter, but later
commentators as well, including Porphyry, Simplicius, and Philoponus.
And the same debates returned with vigor in the High Middle Ages. For,
whereas the Thomists referred to prime matter but rejected its possible exis-
tence, the Scotists sided with Alexander and maintained that prime matter
can and must exist separate from form. The differences within Aristotelian
scholasticism were so apparent beyond just disputes about hylomorphism
that during the sixteenth century the University of Padua established sepa-
rate Thomist and Scotist chairs in metaphysics and theology, effectively
endorsing the view that there were no fewer than two legitimate versions
of Aristotle.33

This alone urges caution when using the term "hylomorphism." More
troubling, however, "hylomorphism" has also served to hide the deep
agreements that existed between Peripatetics and their supposed execution-
ers, the seventeenth century's novatores. To be sure, the rhetoric of the
seventeenth century was firmly against the "philosophy of the schools," as
Aristotelian scholasticism was frequently identified. But rhetoric is not

31 For the early reception of Aristotle, see the contributions in Aristotle Transformed:
The Ancient Greek Commentators and Their Influence, ed. Richard Sorabji (London:
Duckworth, 1990). For the diverse meanings of "Aristotelianism," see the introduction
to Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism , ed. R. W. Sharpies (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2001), 1-11 and the references in note 39 below.
32 The early Commentators views on prime matter can be found in Richard Sorabji, The
Philosophy of the Commentators , 200-600 AD (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
2005), 2: chapter 17.
33 This point is made in Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philos-
ophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 72.

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 Manning ♦ The History of " Hylomorphism "

always the historian's best guide. The misstep is to allow this rhetoric, cou-
pled with the late nineteenth-century use of "hylomorphism" noted above,
to lull us into believing in a singular doctrine unifying all of the Peripatetic
tradition that is capable of being unilaterally rejected. In other words, when
contemporary scholars find the likes of Descartes, Hobbes, or Boyle reject-
ing the school philosophy, it is all too easy to interpret them as rejecting
hylomorphism and therefore all matter-form thinking.
But this is simply not what occurred. More accurately, these early mod-
ern figures were rejecting specific incarnations of matter-form thinking,
such as the common (but not ever-present) Aristotelian scholastic belief
that forms were "substantial" and capable of existing without matter. Or,
they were rejecting the Scotist belief that there existed a "prime matter"
that was a formless and undifferentiated precondition for change. These
specific features of matter-form thinking were ridiculed and abandoned by
the novatores , who took little interest in disputes taking place within the
Peripatetic tradition even while taking one side against the other. But
matter-form thinking persisted, and this is the point likely to be obscured
by unqualified use of "hylomorphism." Descartes assimilated forms to con-
figurations of matter and claimed that the human mind was the substantial
form of the body.34 Hobbes chose to title his most important work " Levia-
than; or The matter , forme, & power of a commen-wealth eccesiasticall
and civil " and Boyle, for all his objections and qualifications, acknowl-
edged that he would "retain the word Forme."35
While the persistence of matter-form thinking in the work of the nova-
tores has been noticed by other scholars, as has the diversity of scholastic
accounts of matter and form, more often the presumption that "hylomor-
phism" equals Peripatetic and that Peripatetic equals what the novatores
rejected has led historians of science and philosophy to misrepresent the
role of matter-form thinking in the seventeenth century and beyond.36
There are occasions when the historian's interest does not lie in exactness,
as one anonymous reviewer pointed out to me. But exactness is required

34 "Omnem materiae variationem, sive omnem eius formarum diversitatem pendere à

motu" (René Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes [Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin,
1996], 8: 52). Descartes's use of matter and form to describe the human being is discussed
in Paul Hoffman, "The Unity of Man" Philosophical Review (1986): 95, 339-70.
35 Robert Boyle, Works of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis (Lon-
don: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 5: 324.
36 Without discussing the history of "hylomorphism," this conclusion is also reached in
Christoph Ltithy and William R. Newman, " 'Matter' And 'Form': By Way Of A Preface"
Early Science and Medicine 2 (1997): 215-26.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ♦ APRIL 2013

when we seek to understand purported shifts away from central doctrines

that critics allege define a movement, as matter-form thinking was taken to
define the essence of Aristotelianism by the early modern novatores. Des-
cartes could write that the diversity of opinion within the schools did not
trouble him "because one can easily overturn all of the foundations on
which they are in agreement," but it is a mistake to take Descartes's word
for it.37 Describing Descartes as "[Rejecting the hylomorphism of the
schools," the mechanical philosophy that characterized early modern sci-
ence as having "rejected any ideas of hylomorphism in physical explana-
tions" or early modern atomism as having "undermined the hylemorphic
foundation of peripatetic physics and consequently all the doctrines con-
structed upon it," without specifying which version of hylomorphism was
being rejected, or that substantial form and not form per se was in dispute,
reinforces the misrepresentation engendered by "hylomorphism" during
the last years of the nineteenth century: that there exists a singular and
unified Peripatetic doctrine of matter and form.38
There is one remaining question to consider in light of these results:
should the history of "hylomorphism," and its misleading implications,
require us to discontinue using the term? A similar question was once asked
about "Aristotelianism" by Charles B. Schmitt in the course of his pointing
out that "Aristotelianisms" would be a more appropriate term to convey
the diversity that lurks behind "Aristotelianism." I would suggest some-
thing similar here. "Hylomorphisms" is a more appropriate term for us to
use than "hylomorphism."39 Aside from emphasizing the plurality of
matter-form thinking we have already encountered, if we use "hylomorph-
isms," I believe we will be encouraged to ask questions that do not
frequently enough occur in our scholarship. For example, if there are
hylomorphisms, which of them were rejected, and when? Which were

37 "[C]ar on peut aisement renuerser tous les fondemens desquels ils sont d'accord
entr'eux" (Descartes, Oeuvres , 3: 232).
38 These quotations come, respectively, from J. A. Cover, "Spinoza's Extended Substance:
Cartesian and Leibnizian Reflections" in New Essays on The Rationalists ed. Rocco J.
Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (London: Oxford University Press, 1999), 106; R. S.
Woolhouse, Descartes , Spinoza , Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth-
Century Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 1993), 58; and Marcus Hellyer, Catholic
Physics : Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 88.
39 Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1983), chapter 1. See also J. M. M. H. Thijssen "Some reflections on continuity
and transformation of Aristotelianism in medieval (and Renaissance) natural philoso-
phy," Documenti e studo sulla tradizione filosofia medieval 2 (1991): 503-28.

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 Manning ♦ The History of "Hylomorphism"

embraced? Which persist even today? These questions hold the promise of
a more accurate account of Aristotle as well as his Peripatetic followers
and the competing traditions in ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early
modern science and philosophy.

California Institute of Technology.

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