Substantial Forms and the Rise of Modern Science

One way to consider what substantial forms were is to explore their demise during the Scientific Revolution. It is suggested here that their physicalization was what doomed them by thwarting their ability to function as formal causes, which was the primary reason for postulating them. After discussing formal causality and its role within hylomorphism, four early modern arguments against substantial forms are considered. The most obvious and natural way for Aristotelians to respond to these arguments is by increasingly physicalizing substantial forms. But then the physicalized notion of form are no longer able to function as formal causes. Thus there is no basis for retaining such entities in one’s ontology. Thus the door for a “bottom-up” explanatory schema, like early modern Epicureanism, is opened.