The Place of Biology in Aristotle's Philosophy
D.M. Balme
In Gotthelf and Lennox, eds., Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology
Cambridge, 1987

"Judging from Aristotle's own discussions, it would seem that form, eidos, and its relation to the individual, was a crucial problem for him; it produces the paradoxes of Metaphysics Zeta, the apparent conflict between the Metaphysics and the Categories, and a possible tension in Aristotle's philosophy which many people have commented on.... Aristotle intended his answer to the puzzle of Metaphysics Zeta to be found in Metaphysics Eta 6 - namely, that at any given moment an object's form and matter are one, so that definition of the individual is logically possible even though it changes from moment to moment." (BALME-1987c, p. 11)

Balme finds a key clue in the GA's account of reproduction: "'What generates is both the individual and the kind (genos) but chiefly the individual; for that is the real being (ousia)' (GA IV 767b24).... In this theory Aristotle seems to demonstrate that the solution of the Metaphysics Zeta puzzle works in practice: one can formalize individual material states and accidents." (BALME-1987c, pp. 18-19)

Related to this is "the reason given in GA II.1 for reproduction, namely the attempt to survive: since the animal cannot persist in number (i.e. as a subsistent individual) but can in form, it persists in the way possible for it; hence there is always its kind. This is sometimes quoted to show that species is eternal and that the individual acts for the sake of the species. But I myself do not find that here. Rather the individual is seeking to preserve its own form, and it can only do this by handing it on; that is why its kind persists." (BALME-1987c, p. 19)

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