SOURCE: "Nature against Authority: Breaking away from the Classics," in Renaissance Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, pp. 285-328.

In this excerpt, Copenhaver and Schmitt examine natural philosophy, describing the means by which several Renaissance philosophers exploited and rejected Peripatetic metaphysics.

In Peripatetic natural philosophy, a physical substance is some particular composite of matter and form. Generation or coming-to-be occurs when matter (hulê) gains form (morphê), passing-away or corruption when form is lost. If a substance passes from one state to another, as from hot to cold, one term of the change may be seen as a form, the other as its negation or privation; what persists is the material substrate. Hence, matter, form, and privation account for the generation and corruption of substances. Matter without form is entirely indeterminate; it lacks quality and form but has the potency to acquire them. In order to have an identity as...