<P> For my definition of matter is just this--the primary substratum of each thing, from which it comes to be without qualification, and which persists in the result . </P> <P> The word Aristotle uses for matter, ὕλη (hyle or hule), can be literally translated as wood or timber, that is, "raw material" for building . Indeed, Aristotle's conception of matter is intrinsically linked to something being made or composed . In other words, in contrast to the early modern conception of matter as simply occupying space, matter for Aristotle is definitionally linked to process or change: matter is what underlies a change of substance . For example, a horse eats grass: the horse changes the grass into itself; the grass as such does not persist in the horse, but some aspect of it--its matter--does . The matter is not specifically described (e.g., as atoms), but consists of whatever persists in the change of substance from grass to horse . Matter in this understanding does not exist independently (i.e., as a substance), but exists interdependently (i.e., as a "principle") with form and only insofar as it underlies change . It can be helpful to conceive of the relationship of matter and form as very similar to that between parts and whole . For Aristotle, matter as such can only receive actuality from form; it has no activity or actuality in itself, similar to the way that parts as such only have their existence in a whole (otherwise they would be independent wholes). </P> <P> René Descartes (1596--1650) originated the modern conception of matter . He was primarily a geometer . Instead of, like Aristotle, deducing the existence of matter from the physical reality of change, Descartes arbitrarily postulated matter to be an abstract, mathematical substance that occupies space: </P> <P> So, extension in length, breadth, and depth, constitutes the nature of bodily substance; and thought constitutes the nature of thinking substance . And everything else attributable to body presupposes extension, and is only a mode of extended </P>

Name and characterize the three states of matter