The principal tenets of the Aristotelian natural philosophy were: the doctrine of form and matter, the four causes, the rigid separation of the world into opposed spheres, and the finite nature of the universe.
This would seem to be al-Kindi's attempt to bring together the idea of species, which is a "secondary substance" in the Categories, with the doctrine of form found in such works as the De Anima and Metaphysics.
Barnes (1990) suggests that the logical hylomorphism (i.e. the application of Aristotle's doctrine of form and matter to logic) of these authors is nevertheless present in Boethius' terminology, such as in the opposition between propositionum complexio and rerum natura (the structure of a sentence vs. the nature of things) (e.g. HS II ii 5).
According to these, Plato's doctrine of forms was, in its general character, highly mathematical, the forms being somehow identified with, or explained in terms of, numbers.
This view of human nature, already expressed by Plato and St. Augustine, is here unredeemed by Plato's doctrine of Forms or by St. Augustine's dogma of salvation through grace.
Cicero defined the republic as an association held together by law; he further asserted, as Plato had maintained with his doctrine of Forms, that government was sanctioned by a universal natural law that reflected the cosmic order.
This is because in "Metaphysics 13-14", Aristotle himself was being thoroughly polemical towards Platonism, in particular against the Academic doctrine of Form-numbers and the whole concept of separable number.
Parmenides' account of Being seems to have contributed to Plato's doctrine of Forms.
Since it is founded on modern science and the doctrine of symbolic form, it builds a place for architecture in a modern philosophical landscape.
Grosseteste's originality lay not in presenting a doctrine of first form and first matter.
