Aristotle's theory of the soul in the De Anima focuses on the types of souls possessed by different types of living beings, distinguished by their different operations. It holds that the soul is the form or essence of every living being; that it is not a substance distinct from the body in which it is found; that it is the possession of a soul (of a specific type) that makes an organism an organism, and therefore that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong type of body, is simply unintelligible. Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question “What is the soul?” he says that there are three kinds of substances which are matter, form and the compound of matter and form. Aristotle is interested in living compounds. It is plants and animals that have souls. It is their soul that makes them living beings. Aristotle also argues that the spirit is immaterial, capable of existing without the body and immortal in "To say that something has a soul simply means that it is alive". Meanwhile, Aristotle's hylomorphism is necessary here, however, in that he would like to be able to explain how living things are generated, change, and grow. “For Aristotle, this is the problem. Matter can take new forms, some of which are accidental while others are essential.” It is clear from this quote that Aristotle means something very different by his use of the Forms. While Plato believed that the Forms were universal truths that could only be truly known by the immortal soul, Aristotle believed that the Forms were fully knowable through investigation, unlike Plato's theory, "which considers individual things in this world as participating in one way or another in the unchanging world of Forms. , has difficulty explaining how things... middle of paper ... of the body, and no problem arises as to how the soul and the body can be united into a substantial whole: “it n It is not necessary to inquire whether the soul and the body are one, any more than the wax and the form, or in general the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter; for although “one” and “being” are expressed in many ways, the primary [meaning] is actuality” (De anima 2.1, 12B6-9). Many philosophers of the 20th century sought just such a mediatic path between materialism and materialism. dualism, at least in the case of the human mind; and much scholarly attention has been focused on whether Aristotle's view can be aligned with one of the modern alternatives, or whether it offers something preferable to one of the modern alternatives, or if it is so tied to falsified Aristotelian science that it must regretfully be rejected as no longer a live option.