Aristotle is sometimes said to have brought philosophy down to earth, because he combined the study of humanity and nature. He stands alone as an archetype of a philosophical naturalist. Naturalism is the belief that reality consists of the natural world, this universe follows consistent and discoverable laws of nature and everything can be understood in terms of those fundamental laws. Nothing exists outside of space and time, nature always acts with a purpose and the key to understanding anything lies in determining its essential purpose.

Many philosophers struggle to explain how change is possible. Aristotle is sometimes called the Father of Science, because he was the first Western thinker to provide an adequate analysis of a process of change based on the claim that form is inseparable from matter.

Aristotle was troubled by Platonic Dualism, The realm of becoming and the realm of being. According to Plato, only Forms (with capital F) are truly real; objects of sense perception are mere reflections or diluted copies of Forms. Aristotle argued that form can be distinguished from content only in thought and never in fact. For ex: we can make a mental distinction between shape and color, but we will never encounter shapeless shapes or colorless colors.

Aristotle argued that every particular thing, considered at any given time, has two aspects. First it shares properties with other particulars. For ex. You and your teachers share many properties, you share properties with Willy the whale also and any other living thing containing hydrogen, but there is something special, unique that you, and I, and your teachers share, that is, our essence, our substance, what can that be? That essence is humanness. Second Aristotle is saying that when we caracterized or define what a thing is, we are speaking of that thing´s substance or essence.

From the Greek word for essence (ousia) Aristotelian form is that which is in matter and makes a thing what it is. According to Aristotle, form is only one basic aspect of reality. The other is matter. Matter In Aristotle´s view, when we ask about a particular thing, we are asking about the material composition of whatever constitutes a thing, the specific stuff that makes a general form (human being) into a particular instance of that form (You and I) is matter.

For Aristotle, matter, from the Greek hyle, is the common material stuff found in a variety of things; matter has no distinct characteristics until some form is imparted to it or until the form in a thing becomes actualized. Aristotle believed that order and purpose are inherent in nature, nature is purposive. Matter provides opportunity, form provides direction. Form does not---cannot---exist without matter; matter does not ----cannot-- - exist without form.

Remember the example of water changing into ice. When water changes into ice, some part of the water itself remains water, and some of the water changes. The basic matter stays the same, but it changes form, as water becomes progressively colder, the behavior or properties of the molecules that constitute water change from liquid form to crystalline form.