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197 DISCUSSION NOTE Prime Matter: a Rejoinder WILLIAM CHARLTON DISCUSSION NOTE Prime Matter: a Rejoinder WILLIAM CHARLTON I In 1956 Hugh R. King attacked the traditional view that Aristotle postulates what the tradition calls 'prime matter'. He drew replies from Friedrich Solmsen in 1958 and A. R. Lacey in 1965. In an appendix to my translation of Physics I-II in 1970 I offered independent arguments for a position similar to King's. My arguments were criticized by H. M. Robinson in 1974 and R. M. Dancy in 1978. Now C. J. F. Williams, in another appendix, though he thinks that Solmsen and Robinson have 'made out their case', makes it out afresh with special reference to the De Generatione et Corruptione. If Williams is to escape the charge of flogging a dead horse, I must attempt a rejoinder. What exactly is the doctrine which some of us deny, and others assert, that Aristotle held? Williams formulates it as follows (p. 211): When one element, e.g. water, changes into another, e.g. air, there is some under- lying matter which loses the quality of coldness and acquires its contrary, heat. This underlying matter, which persists through change, is not itself perceptible, nor is it anything in actuality ... although it is ... all things in potentiality. It is not body, but it is potentially so. At first that sounds plain enough. The friends of prime matter, however, do not pretend that it 'is anywhere in the physical world "actually" present' (Solmsen p. 245). It can exist 'only as actualized in some determinate matter - i.e. in one of the elements' (Robinson p. 168).That being so, there will be no empirically discoverable difference between a world which contains prime matter and a world such as King and I wish to impute to Aristotle, in which there is nothing more basic that the elements, and they change into one another without there being anything that remains. Is there even a conceptual difference? Or is the difference between saying that nothing remains and saying that prime matter remains, purely one of words? Recent friends of prime matter have concentrated on verbal evidence. They assemble texts in which they claim Aristotle speaks as if there were prime matter, and try to explain away texts in which other people claim he speaks as if there were not. In the next two sections I shall go through the texts which are deployed on either side. I may say here, however, that this microscopic approach can take us only a certain way. I shall argue that no passage is decisive in favour of the friends of prime matter, but they maintain that no passage is decisive against them. In the last section, therefore, I shall attempt more of an aerial view. Although there could be no physical evidence for or against prime matter, there are certain metaphysical principles which require it. I shall enquire whether Aristotle held any of these principles; the question whether or not he believed in prime matter really comes down to the question how far, if at all, it is demanded by his philosophy as a whole. 197 II Without necessarily proclaiming himself an out and out Popperian the proposer of an interpretation should say what he would consider proof that his interpretation was wrong. My view that Aristotle did not employ the notion of prime matter would be refuted by a text like: Of our predecessors, some say that all things come from one thing as matter, such as water or fire, others that things come from several. That all things come from one is true; but it is not water or fire or anything like that, but something undetermined and unlimited, like Anaximander's Unlimited except that that was separable and this is not. or When water comes to be out of air or air out of water, there is always something which remains and which was first water and then air; in itself this is neither a definite thing nor of a definite quality or amount. It would not be hard to translate these statements into Aristotelian-sounding Greek or to find places in Aristotle's works into which they might be inserted. That no such statement can be found it itself an indication that Aristotle did not believe in prime matter. The passages actually adduced by Solmsen, Robinson, Dancy and Williams, which I shall now run through, are considerably less explicit. (1) Phys. I 192a25-34.Robinson argues that since Aristotle says that if matter passed away it would ultimately arrive at itself, he must be talking about the lowest kind of matter. Either this is prime matter or it is the elements. If we say it is the elements, then since in a13-14 Aristotle speaks of matter as remaining, we must admit he thinks that when the elements change into one another, there is something which remains. But this will be prime matter. So either way Aristotle accepts prime matter (p. 175). To this argument I reply, first, that it is temerarious to apply what Aristotle says in a 1 3- 14,where he is trying to accommodate Plato's views to his, to the apparently separate discussion of a24-34. Secondly, the later passage need not be about the lowest sort of matter. To suppose it is does not help us to understand 'If it is destroyed, it is to this that it will arrive in the end'. The thought behind that is surely the simple one that since matter is what things arise out of and pass away into, it does not make sense to speak of matter itself as coming to be and passing away. It is not matter but 'composites' that do that. (2) Phys. IV 209b8-12, 211b29-36, 217a21-7. Dancy mentions these passages, though without putting them forward as formal evidence. I discussed 217a 21-7 in my appendix pp. 138-9,and I shall touch on 209b8-12 below. 211b31-6may be translated: Just as in alteration there is something which is now pale and again dark, and now hard and again soft, which is why we say that the matter is something real, so also place seems to exist through a similar appearance except that the former exists because what was air, that is now water [o fiv TovTOvvv `v8wp]whereas place exists because where was air, there is now water [o'vfiv ài¡p, Èv'Texù6'iaTt vvv In a different context, 8 fiv &Ap,To'vTO puf v8wp might be very strong evidence. I do not think it will bear much weight here. Aristotle is discussing place, not the transformation of the elements. He starts by talking about alteration. And he switches to the transformation 198 .
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