seigneur wrote:

Maybe "Is form structure?" by Oderberg http://www.generativescience.org/papers/nature/Oderberg-_2014-1-11.pdf

I have Real Essentialism but I don't think I've ever given that article a read. Thanks.

In http://www.academia.edu/35229710/An_Aristotelian_Approach_to_Quantum_Mechanics by Gil Sanders there is the following potentially illuminating passage.

Gil Sanders wrote:

A crucial  consequence  of hylomorphism  is  that  it  denies  that  the  macro world is  reducible to particles.  The  particles  in a  substance  do not  exist  as  actual  particles  in a  macro level  substance  but  rather exist  virtually  as  parts  of a  macro substance  – i.e. the  particles  do not  exist  as individual  substances  arranged as  some  pattern (contra  reductionism) but  exist  only as  parts  of a substance  that  confer and derive  their actuality to and from  the  substantial  form  as  a  whole.  A substance  is  the  “essence  of a  thing… what  it  is  said to be  in respect  of itself”  (Metaphysics  Z.4. 1029b14). Something exists  virtually  insofar as  it  has  the  potential  to exist  as  an individual  substance  but  actually  exists  not  as  an individual  substance  but  as  a  part  of another substance  by both giving its  actuality to this  substance  and having its  actuality  through  the  substance.  A  good example  is  H20.  The  hydrogen and the  oxygen do not  exist  as  individual  substances, but  rather exist  as  virtual  parts  of the  water substance.  The  water thereby acquires  powers  that  neither hydrogen nor oxygen have  in themselves, but  nor could these  powers  be  acquired without  either of their particular actualities  (as  opposed to some  other actual  chemical) being so conjoined to become  a  new  substance.  Thus  in some  sense, hydrogen and oxygen stop existing as  actual  things.

Make of it whatever you will, but my intuition has always agreed that "particles" is the wrong name for whatever it is physicists are observing. "Particles" gives the impression of tiny billiard balls or such objects and that's the wrong impression.

The right impression is more like water that as if falls into particles (waterdrops) when you, wanting to take a closer look, isolate smaller amounts of it, and then at some point it becomes indivisible and turns into vapor. And vapor is not non-water. It's water-beyond-waterdrops. The same way, quantum phenomena are not non-matter. They are matter-beyond-particles where the particles are no more "what matter really is" than waterdrops are "what water really is". It's matter/water in a particular state given particular conditions.