Would not be enough to account for our use of language, I believe.

Would not be enough to account for higher level properties, as things are not reducible to fundamental particles.

Would not even be able to do what it's supposed to do; one of the reasons why fundamental particles are fundamental particles is that they can be rearranged in different ways, as they are constituents of matter, but their own arrangement is only intelligible because the arrangement itself has a specific form or structure; it is not enough for fundamental particles to have essences, the fact that they are arranged in different manners to constitute different things only makes sense if the things have essences/forms.

The individuals of many animal species have very clear recognition of the essence of their species, usually accompanied by eagerness to act in consequence.
 

UGADawg wrote:

What about the argument from Crawford Elder, cited by Oderberg and Feser, that attempting to reduce macro-entities to fundamental particles is problematic? In particular, to use their example, to say a stone is nothing over and above particles arranged stone-wise raises the question of which particles, specifically, identify the stone. They can't be identified by reference to the stone itself (because circular), but if they're not, then there's no unique causal relation by means of which to pick out only those particles which constitute the stone either.

This is a good point. I really need to finish Oderberg's Real Essentialism. This also brings up another thought I've been having regarding the notion that essence explains unity within a thing. Couldn't we just explain unity by appealing to certain environmental conditions a thing's parts are contingent on? For instance, the reason why a zebra remains a zebra isn't due to some metaphysical principle of unity rather it's due to the proper temperature, gravity, and other forces acting in balance in order to sustain the zebra's cellular, molecular, and atomic structure.