A third one was how one physical thing can change into another, e.g.the tiger that eats an antilope not only ends the ability of the antilope's substantial forms to continue animating its prime matter but also enables that same prime matter to become absorbed or animated by the tiger's substantial form.
Aristotle, on the other hand, holds that substantial forms actualize the potency of prime matter made receptive by agents of change.
[2] Each substance being in its nature fixed and determined, nothing is farther from the spirit of Aristotelianism or Scholasticism than a theory of evolution which would regard even the essences of things as products of change.
Plato maintains in the Phaedo regarding our knowledge of equals: Aristotle was the first to distinguish between matter (hyle) and form (morphe).
The perfection of the form of a thing is its entelechy in virtue of which it attains its fullest realization of function (De anima, ii.
Medieval theologians, newly exposed to Aristotle's philosophy, applied hylomorphism to Christianity, such as to the transubstantiation of the Eucharist's bread and wine to the body and blood of Jesus.
The Aristotelian conception of form was adopted by the Scholastics, to whom, however, its origin in the observation of the physical universe was an entirely foreign idea.
Descartes, referring to substantial forms, says: They were introduced by philosophers solely to account for the proper action of natural things, of which they were supposed to be the principles and bases ...