The Principle of Indetermination and Potency

Everything formal or determined at whatever level of material part is always subject to further potential for transformation. New things do come out of older things so that there are principles of continuity between one being and another. For example, if all the cells, chemicals, and even atoms in my body were changed into something else, there would be some principle of continuity between me and the other thing. But this would not be a continuity of natural forms. And instead, it is the matter of my body that has been taken up into that other reality. According to Aquinas, this is the elusive but real thing we denote,. We mean to denote when we speak philosophically of matter.