 Sturm’s approach combines the strengths of both the scholastic and seventeenth-century mechanist approach in order to remedy their reciprocal shortcomings. Passive mechanical forms (as Aristotelian-scholastic forms) are particular principles of explanation that can be used to account for different specific phenomena. At the same time, passive mechanical forms (as mechanical principles) are ontologically nothing but modes of matter shaped by motion. Passive forms are different among themselves but they are all ontologically shaped by the same universal principles, which make explanations based on passive mechanical forms homogenous and uniform (from a conceptual point of view) without making them too general and abstract.