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Treatise Compilation · Ancient Greek

Metaphysics

Τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά

OPEN THE BOOK WITH A QUESTION

Can the move from potentiality to actuality explain how something changes while remaining itself?

Evidence-backed moments
2
Timeline events
1
Verified places
1

People who carry this work into the voyage

Read the argument as a story

Story 1What is real, and what remains through change?

Aristotle — Matter and form, potentiality and actuality

The question that opens it

Can the move from potentiality to actuality explain how something changes while remaining itself?

What changes as you read the work
  1. 1

    Aristotle distinguishes the matter composing an individual substance from the form by which that matter constitutes a functioning whole.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Aristotle's Metaphysics

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §12 Actuality and Potentiality, first paragraph

      Open source
  2. 2

    He extends the distinction between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality or activity (energeia) to explain change across time.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Aristotle's Metaphysics

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §12 Actuality and Potentiality; Metaphysics Θ.1

      Open source
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How the work moved through time

  1. Around 335 BCE

    Work associated with the Lyceum period systematizes a vocabulary of substance and change.

    Athens · Activity

    PerspectiveOpen in question

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Continue with the questions it unsettles