Hmm... Tricky. The role of the potter is more relevant than it appears in the book.

I don't think the statue is really attached to the clay in terms of form and content. Although it is true that Bob went to a potter, a statue can be made of different material, such as marble or gold. Bob expected to receive a form of something, but he received a lump of clay. Bob can easily go to another artist and ask for a marble statue instead. So, no, they are not attached to each other. But what about the artist, so-called the potter? I see a dependent relationship between him and the content but not form. Potters only work with clay, so everything that is put on his hand will be made of it. Then, I think clay is more dependent upon the potter (which is the main cause of the existence of his job) than the statue itself.

What is this thing that Bob paid for? We could call it form. In the world of art, form goes hand in hand with its brother: content. Form is actual shapes molded into the clay. It's the technique that shows up, the style, whether medieval or modern. The content is something beyond the form: it's the meaning of the statue, which doesn't have to be something that can be put into words, although it could be. In the case of a statue, the content could be the way it makes us feel. — frank

Bob received an Ikea statue - assembly required - but he ordered a fully assembled statue.

What is this thing that Bob paid for? — frank

Bob received a blob of clay. What he ordered but didn't receive was the work required to turn that clay into a statue as well as the artists skill and vision.

Bob was robbed! Typical. Avant guard artists are prone to passing off indifferent blobs as somehow inspired works of art. Rubbish!

What Bob desired was an artist who understood the meaning of 'statue' (even if it meant a vulgar gnome). Michelangelo didn't send a block of granite to market with the title of "David". He expended his talent and labor to extract an actual, detailed representation of "David" from the block of rock.

The artist who Bob was dealing with also submitted a heap of gravel to the Museum of Modern Art, for which he was praised by idiot savants in the art world.

There are certainly good, great, and very great artists working today, but there are also operators who are flim flam artists passing off crap as art.

Any material can be employed to express an idea, but it takes labor and talent to achieve the expression,

I don't think the statue is really attached to the clay in terms of form and content. Although it is true that Bob went to a potter, a statue can be made of different material, such as marble or gold. — javi2541997

You're saying Bob paid for the form, not the clay. It sounds like you're saying we can separate the two. As you say, the same form can appear with different materials. But where is the form if it's separate? In a special realm? In people's minds?

:grin:

Bob received a blob of clay. What he ordered but didn't receive was the work required to turn that clay into a statue as well as the artists skill and vision. — T Clark

So you're saying it's not the form Bob paid for, but labor costs?

So you're saying it's not the form Bob paid for, but labor costs? — frank

That's not what I wrote.

What is this thing that Bob paid for? We could call it form. In the world of art, form goes hand in hand with its brother: content. Form is actual shapes molded into the clay. — frank

One reference point that comes to my mind is Aristotle's form (morphe) and substance (hyle). Now there's a complicating factor here, because 'hyle' - derived from the word for timber - has a different meaning to 'substance' as that is used in translations of Aristotle's metaphysics. 'Hyle' refers to the underlying potentiality or material aspect of a particular, while morphe (form) refers to the actualizing structure or organization. Hyle, in this case, is more about potential than about an actual material substance with uniform properties like timber or lumber. It is what is capable of taking on form, a kind of indeterminate potentiality that becomes something specific when combined with morphe.

In Greek philosophy, I think the form would be presumed to be the work of a mind, e.g,. Plato's demiurge in the Timaeus. In Aristotle’s biology there is a kind of proto-concept of self-organization. For Aristotle, natural things have an internal telos or goal-directedness—an internal principle of motion and rest. While Aristotle didn’t propose self-organization in the modern sense, he did argue that living organisms have an inherent purpose and organization that arises from their nature, not from the imposition of an external mind.

I don't think the Greeks shared the conception of self-organisation that is associated with modern biological theory.

So a formless lump of clay would be, in this scheme, merely a potential something, it would have no identity. Bob has paid for a lump of clay, let's hope at the market rate.

However, form and content has a slightly different meaning to form and substance. 'In art and art criticism, form and content are considered distinct aspects of a work of art. The term form refers to the work's composition, techniques and media used, and how the elements of design are implemented. It mainly focuses on the physical aspects of the artwork, such as medium, color, value, space, etc., rather than on what it communicates. Content, on the other hand, refers to a work's subject matter, i.e., its meaning' ~ Wikipedia. Form and content is a more characteristically modern expression, although the lineage of the idea might be traced back to the earlier form and substance. But even in that case, a lump of clay really has no form, and so, no meaningful content, other than as raw material. Again, it looks like Bob has been ripped off.

I don't think the Greeks shared the conception of self-organization that is associated with modern biological theory. — Wayfarer

Aristotle considered the matter through developing different ideas about seeds. That some bits of material were ready to become something else is in direct opposition to the Pythagorean idea of forms impressing themselves into matter like a seal pressed into wax.

Think it this way. A house requires an architect who designs it. A builder who constructs it using the materials from the supplier.

A pile of building materials is not a house.

He is not saying that apparently but I would. PLUS the level of skill and the cost of materials. I would pay an incompetent potter less or rather not even bother hiring them for their service.

Goods and Services. The potter is providing a service not a good (their knowledge and skill).

People pay for two things:
- The Practical use of an item.
- The Aesthetic quality of the item.

The lump of clay is neither of any practical use in its current form nor of any real aesthetic quality either. It is just raw material with potential use for creating something beautiful and/or useful.

Additional Edit: Why is this a curious question for you? Show us what interests you. There are clearly many different paths that could be explored here.

You're saying Bob paid for the form, not the clay. It sounds like you're saying we can separate the two — frank

Exactly.

As you say, the same form can appear with different materials. — frank

Yes, the same statue can be made of marble or even wood. It is all on Bob's taste.

But where is the form if it's separate? In a special realm? In people's minds? — frank

Good questions. I admit that I didn't think that deeply in the form but only in the content because it seemed (at least to me) that clay was key to the statue, and that's not true. I can only say that form is mind-dependent, and I agree with you. This is why I think the material is not relevant. Bob wanted a statue of his beautiful dog (for example). Does it really matter if it is made of clay or marble?

Why is this a curious question for you? — I like sushi

This was in John Perry's book about personal identity, as I recall. It's about the relationship between form and matter (matter being defined as something formless.) It's just examining the way we think.

I can only say that form is mind-dependent, and I agree with you. — javi2541997

So when you look out at the world, are we seeing mind-dependent forms all over the place?

Yes, I think so. Forms and shapes are observed and processed by us. I mean, the sun is not aware that it is a sphere. Our mind just processed the sun in such a shape. I think this is what happens to Bob. He wants a statue, a form that is only in his mind and desire. The potter is not guilty because he only works with clay.

How are the clay and the statue related? — frank

Through the form.

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed on a thing, or content were ‘beyond’ form and style.

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed on a thing, or content were ‘beyond’ form and style. — Joshs

I first encountered Heidegger in a book about the philosophy of beauty. Some secondary source told me that Heidegger thought that we experience form and matter in a relationship of dynamic tension. We broadcast the form outward onto the world, and pull sensations in (as in listening more closely, squinting to see). That broadcasting versus drawing in (which is also yin and yang, btw), is what a thing is. Supposedly he said that the original greek word for subjectivity meant core, as in the unchanging idea of a thing, like the center of a solar system. Cool, huh?

Through the form. — MoK

:up:

I think both form and content are missing from the blob Bob received. — frank

You mean that intended, desired or expected form and content are missing. The blob is still a form and generates content for Bob. If it didn't have form or content, as the thing he knows should be otherwise, Bob wouldn't know what he received.

Bob's blob would be more interesting if it were a story entry. Bob watches The Blob after receiving the blob. The unformed blob now terrorizes Bob, makes him feel nauseous because he cannot grasp its form or content. It becomes for Bob a mentally pernicious all consuming entity. Bob must form it himself, must tame the clay, to calm an agitation or cure his ill. The newly fired figure he makes works for a while but serves as memory of its origin. Bob is contaminated by endless spontaneous content of the blob and is driven into madness and ends his life.

Bob's ashes happen to be dispersed into a clay deposit, from which an artist of a future period takes source material.

How are the clay and the statue related? — frank

The matter is the clay; the general arrangement of the matter is the statue;
The matter contains all forms possible from the substance of the matter; the form necessarily contains no other substance than that of the matter from which it is arranged;
When both are given, without regard to either the constituency of the matter, nor the causality of the arrangement, the relation between them reduces to a modality, the primary schemata of which are change, re: a statue from clay, origination, re: this statue from clay, and necessity, re: this statue from clay.

Under the stated conditions, in which Bob paid for a certain arrangement, given as necessarily contained in the matter, but received back only the matter exhibiting no formed arrangement at all, relegates the relation, not to between the clay that exists and the statue that doesn’t, but to between Bob and the clay, which is still modality and still primarily the schema of change, in this case, the absence of it. The schema of necessity, on the other hand, becomes mere possibility, re: the clay still contains the possibility of arrangement into a statue.

So it is proper that the relation between the clay and the statue, and the relation between Bob and the clay, reduces to time, the only negotiable connection between that which changes and that which does not.

Bet you never saw that one comin’, dija???
(Charlie Chaplin-esque exit, stage right, or…guy gets his Mr. Smartypants ass yanked by giant hook, thrown out the backstage side door)

A pile of building materials is not a house. — LuckyR

Some pile of building materials is possibly a house somewhere. An unfinished house can be a house. Lots of things that were not designed to be houses are houses, for example, caves, trees, cars, boats, old factories.

Other houses remain uninhabited when too expensive or when used as a financial investment.

Does it matter whether an object is designed by intent?

In an aleatoric process, forms are discovered, not created. Or they're "created" by being discovered and used in new ways.

The blob is still a form and generates content for Bob. — Nils Loc

Yep. There really isn't any such thing as the Formless. It's just that once you start talking about forms, you have to have something that received the form. It's more about the way we divide up the world. It's something built in to the way we think.

I am lucky enough to live in the house I remade for myself. So, both made and found. The 'made' is also a matter of finding in regard to what I could afford. I regret some of those choices but I cannot cohabit the place of the one who made them.

As a worker in the trades, I have diligently attempted to carry out designs and fell short to varying degrees. People still live in those places, living with my work. When I visit extremely designed spaces, I see the shadows of my life in peculiar details another investigator might miss.

I have encountered those who have a different relationship to their work than I have developed. I will not opine upon that. I am pretty sure it is different.

There really isn't any such thing as the Formless. — frank

Cosmology shows there are enormous amounts of formless matter scattered throughout the Universe. And that's only the matter that can be seen!

Cosmology shows there are enormous amounts of formless matter scattered throughout the Universe. And that's only the matter that can be seen! — Wayfarer

But we imagine that if we had eyes small enough, we would see particles down there. It's not really formless, is it?

We're able to impose form on it by way of analysis of the chemical composition, spectroscopic analysis, etc. But in another sense, there are vast clouds of interstellar matter that are formless.

Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment.

In an aleatoric process, forms are discovered, not created. Or they're "created" by being discovered and used in new ways. — jkop

I agree. But it is very difficult to find an example where forms are discovered, not created. Maybe it is just our perception when we use the form we already know in different ways. I think it would be difficult for a potter to mould a triangle or cube if he is not aware of these shapes or forms...

Or could he mould it by chance, as it suggests that link? Hmm... interesting. Time to throw a block of clay in my pot, let's see what destiny is preparing for me this Friday.

I am lucky enough to live in the house I remade for myself. So, both made and found. The 'made' is also a matter of finding in regard to what I could afford. — Paine

Interesting :up: I've recently built a house for myself too. The ground is remade, but the house is made from scratch. In the design and construction process you both make and find parts and their features relative to a whole.

Like drawing a picture, where there are too many details to draw, too many decisions to make, so you leave some parts blank/unbuilt until the drawn or built parts give you sufficient reason to complete the picture/building.

But it is very difficult to find an example where forms are discovered, not created. — javi2541997

New forms and properties are discovered now and then. See for example aperiodic tiling.

Can we say that the form is something that can be observed directly through empirical methods as it exists physically. Whereas the content is something that cannot be observed directly through empirical methods.

If this distinction between form and content is true, it can be said that content is something that can be represented through the use of form and form here acts as a tangible matter which has empirical value and, it's existence can be confirmed by others.