Hylomorphism

Time is substantival and infinite — Aristotle defined time as "the measure of motion according to before and after," making it real but dependent on change. Time is continuous (Aristotle rejected temporal atomism), linear, and uni-directional. Its grain is continuous because motion, which time measures, is itself continuous. There is no first moment of time in Aristotle's framework; the cosmos is eternal.

Space is substantival and finite — Aristotle's concept of "place" (topos) is the inner boundary of the containing body. The cosmos is a finite sphere with the Earth at the center. Space is flat (locally), three-dimensional, and local: every body has a natural place to which it tends. There is no void or empty space for Aristotle; space is always the place of some body.

Matter is substantival and infinite (as prime matter) — in hylomorphism, every physical substance is a composite of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Prime matter (materia prima) is pure potentiality, formless and indeterminate until actualized by form. Matter is conserved in the sense that prime matter persists through all substantial change. It is local because every material substance occupies a natural place.

The observer is a composite of matter and form — an ensouled body, not a ghost in a machine. Situated in a single time and place, the observer knows reality by abstracting the forms of things from their material instantiation: the intellect receives the form of a tree without becoming wooden. Knowledge begins with sense perception and is immediate in scope, but the intellect accumulates abstracted forms into a growing body of understanding. The observer is embodied — the soul is the form of the body, not a separate substance trapped within it — and active, since knowing is an act of the intellect. Multiple observers share the same capacity for formal abstraction and inhabit a common world of matter-form composites.

Infinite and substantival — energy corresponds to Aristotle's concept of energeia (actuality) — the activity by which potentiality is realized in form; it is a fundamental feature of reality, not derived from something more basic. Conservation: Conserved — matter is eternal and uncreated in Aristotle's cosmos; the total substrate of change persists through all transformations, even as forms come and go. Dispersibility: Irreversible — natural processes move from potentiality to actuality in a directed way; the acorn becomes an oak but the oak does not revert to an acorn; teleological motion gives energy its irreversible character.

Information is the form that organizes matter — form and matter together constitute informational content. Without form, matter is unintelligible; without matter, form is uninstantiated. Information is relational because it exists in the form-matter composite, not in either alone. It is conserved because forms (as universals) persist through the generation and corruption of particular things. It is continuous because matter is infinitely divisible and form admits of degrees. The framework places this as conserved at both scales: forms are eternal informational principles that organize matter at the cosmic scale, and the rational soul (as substantial form of the human being) is conserved at the personal-identity scale — its informational pattern persists through and beyond bodily death.