Star Stuff and Forms: Hylomorphism and Mereology

Abstract

Hylomorphism, regardless of its historical associations, is the doctrine that form and matter are both ontologically fundamental constituents of objects in this world. It has been a viable ontological project in the last few decades for it provides an alternative to reductionist theories, as well as emergentist ones. Hylomorphism however, has its own unsettled controversies. One of which whether form and matter stand in parthood relations towards the compound and towards each other in the compound. This controversy contains two main intricately related questions: first, whether form and matter are parts of a hylomorphic compound. Second, the question of what is a ‘part.’. The study of parthood relations, known as mereology (after the Greek μερος/meros meaning ‘part’), within a hylomorphic compound forces us to consider the literature on mereology, especially the attempts of formalization of mereological relations. It seems, however, that standard formal mereologies do not reflect the relations of matter and form we have in a hylomorphic compound. Thus, if Hylomorphism is true, then we need to find a new theory of mereology. This thesis aims at introducing a version of Hylomorphism I call Scientific Hylomorphism with a refined understanding of form and matter and which makes use of classical extensional mereology but an alternative mereology constructed in the thesis I call Morphological Mereology for the sake of describing parthood relations within a hylomorphic compound. Ultimately, this thesis aims to contribute to a longer project of developing and formalizing a new hylomorphic theory.