Plato’s theory of Forms is the ancestor of all species of idealism. Modern scientists are generally realists and so will find it incomprehensible or bizarre. So did Aristotle. He wanted to explain the features of the physical world. But, if Forms are eternal and static how then, he asks, can they actually do anything? And what does it mean to say that the physical world ‘participates’ in the world of Forms? And if a Form is merely a mental conception, then does not any one physical object have as many Forms as ways that you can think about it? And if a Form exists for any given physical
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