The Philosophical-Historical Development of the Equivalents of Aristotle’s Hyle

In this paper, the authors examine and discuss the different equivalents of the Aristotelean term of hyle in Latin, Arabic, and Persianin terms of their etymological and conceptual features. Moreover, they try to reveal the relationship between this concept and the concept of mother and female gender in Old Persian. It seems that the early translators of Greek philosophy, because of the conceptual relationships between hyle and mother in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, chose some equivalents for hyle which derived from the meanings of mother and female gender. This is particularly important because the concept of philosophical matter which is rooted in Aristotle’s philosophy and is commonly used today, especially in empirical sciences, is rooted in the concepts of mother and female gender in terms of its historical and philosophical background. This has prompted the early translators of Greek philosophy who were looking for near equivalents for the Greek hyle to consider this relationship and create terms which could transfer the meaning of this word correctly. However, this does not mean that in Aristotle’s philosophy, similar to some mythological beliefs, hyle indicates that the world is the offspring of the intimacy of male and female elements. Rather, it means that among ancient Greeks, including Aristotle and Plato, the female gender has been introduced as the receptacle of form in the birth of human beings and animals.