Three lessons from the biology

Now we are in a position to bring this inquiry home to the metaphysics: extracting the relevant points of intuition and theory developed in connection with biological objects as Aristotelean substances, in order to illuminate what he calls (Meta. Zeta 1) the central and most vexatious metaphysical question: What is substance? Let us first take stock of the more significant new aspects that have been introduced into our aristotelische Weltauffassung since we took leave of the Categories.

The size and depth of the world

First, the little world of the Categories is seen from the biological perspective to be embedded in, to be a spatially discontinuous fraction of, a much wider and deeper universe: the total sublunary universe of Empedoclean matter. This universe is wider, in having a great deal more in it than just the (“primary”, sensu Cat.) individual substances and their cross- and intra-categorial paraphernalia: there is matter in many other states than as worked up into substances – such as the many piles (molar “earth”), jugfuls (“water”), breezes, conflagrations, etc. ad lib. And this universe is deeper: for the “primary” substances of the Cats., which in that work, as has been noticed already (§4), are atomic, opaque, and inscrutable, are now seen to be endowed with internal structure: as the semi-stable “knots” that are open to the detailed analysis that goes in terms of Matter and Form.