Prime matter
“hayula”
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 5 anchored passages
الهيولي · al-hayūlā · hayūlā · the ultimate matter · the unformed element · العنصر غير المصور · المادة الاصلية · المادة القصوى · الهيولي الاولى
in the texts
Risālat al-Wāridāt
Hylē, the simple uncomposed substrate named by the philosophers, in which the necessary ordered motion produces ebb and flow, rending after closure, and the gradation of subtle and dense out of which the spheres settle.
nor composition — and this is what they call prime matter (*al-hayūlā*).
Risālat baqāʼ al-nafs baʻda fanāʼ al-jasad
The shapeless, patternless substrate that receives forms and becomes as a mother to things, called hayula, the unformed element, or by Ibn Rushd the ultimate matter, and whose eternity is the pivot on which the whole dispute between philosophers and theologians turns.
Plato (1) built the foundation of his doctrine on the coming-to-be of the world upon the eternity (*azalīyah*) of an original matter, which he expresses as the unformed element, or first prime matter (*hayūlā*) (2):
As for the original matter, or the unformed element — which Ibn Rushd, the commentator upon Aristotle's philosophy, calls the ultimate matter (*al-māddah al-quṣwā*) — it has, for Aristotle, no agent.
[14] (5) Prime matter, for Locke — the philosopher, author of the book *An Inquiry into the Human Understanding*, born in the year 1632 and died in the year 1704 — is necessary and inseparable.