  Aristotle contends that his hylomorphism provides an attractive middle way between what he sees as the mirroring excesses of his predecessors. In one direction, he means to reject Presocratic kinds of materialism; in the other, he opposes Platonic dualism.  He gives the Presocratics credit for identifying the material causes of life, but then faults them for failing to grasp its formal cause.  By contrast, Plato earns praise for grasping the formal cause of life; unfortunately, as Aristotle sees things, he then proceeds to neglect the material cause, and comes to believe that the soul can exist without its material basis.  Hylomorphism, in Aristotle’s view, captures what is right in both camps while eschewing the unwarranted mono-dimensionality of each. To account for living organisms, Aristotle contends, the natural scientist must attend to both matter and form.