This essay provides an analysis of GC I and explains why we now need to investigate the “so-called elements” – the primary bodies that make up all the more complex bodies of the sublunary world. This is an important passage for understanding how the discussion of the elements fits into the overall program of the whole work. In the second section, Aristotle broaches the question of whether there is a kind of matter “beyond” these elements. He criticizes two earlier theories which (he thinks) give an affirmative answer to this question: Anaximander’s theory of the apeiron and Plato’s theory of the Receptacle in the Timaeus. In the final section, Aristotle sets out his own position. This section is evidence that he was committed to prime matter – an ultimate material substratum which partially constitutes each of the primary sublunary bodies, and which underlies the process of elemental inter-transformation.

This chapter focuses on the intellectual activities of Aristotelian philosophers within the late-Renaissance and early modern university context. It shows that Scholastic Aristotelianism constituted a varied, dynamic, and long-lasting philosophical tradition rooted in, but not limited to, problems arising from Aristotle’s texts. Late Scholastic solutions did not always pose obstacles to new sciences and matter theories, but also anticipated them. The chapter examines key variants of Aristotelianism in the context of their institutional settings and curricula. This provides an opportunity to re-assess radical Aristotelianism (e.g., Averroism), the late-Scholastic revival (e.g., the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum and Suárez) and Protestant Scholasticism. Developing Charles Schmitt’s thesis that there were many different, even conflicting, Aristotelianisms, the chapter argues that some so-called “anti-Aristotelians,” whom the moderns conscripted as allies to their cause, are better understood as working within a broader Aristotelian framework. Identifying the shared Aristotelian problem space of both more orthodox and controversial philosophers of the period affords a better understanding of both the conflicts themselves and the extensive debts that later developments bore to this tradition.