Form as grounding properties

I have said that 'Form' is like 'organisation'. But the sense of 'form' is wider. It goes far beyond mere shape for example. The form of an oak tree, for example, 'encompasses ... its various parts and their purposes, such as its leaves and bark and their functions; its characteristic activities, such as growth by synthesising water and other nutrients, and its production of fruit; its life cycle from fruit to fruit bearer. It is in being organised and active in this way that the matter which constitutes an oak 'embodies' or is 'informed' by the substantial form 'oak'; it is only by virtue of this that it 'forms' an oak tree at all. The oak's properties and activities 'flow' or 'emanate', are 'formally caused' by its nature.' (Roger Woolhouse, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, London, 1993, Routledge, p.10.)

'A thing's characteristic operations derive from its substantial form.' (Aquinas, ST 3a.75, 76), quoted by Woolhouse, p.10.

Woolhouse summarises the Scholastic conception by saying that it thought of 'forms as the organising active natures of substances as they develop and change'. (Woolhouse, p.59.)

'This is the conception of an individual substance ['substance' in this context, = 'thing'] as active, as something which 'embodies' in itself, as its 'nature', the principles of its development and change. To understand and explain why an individual substance is as it is, and does as it does, is - except when it is on the passive receiving end of the activities of other substances - to understand how its properties and changing states 'flow' or 'emanate' from the nature, essence or form of the kind of thing it is.' (Roger Woolhouse, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, London, 1993, Routledge, p. 11.)

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