This episode suggests that different culturally assumed philosophies of matter produce different culturally assumed natural philosophies. This is illustrated three times in Western intellectual history. Firstly, a Platonist idealist philosophy of matter is integral with, and produces, the natural philosophy of Greco-Roman antiquity and Byzantium. Secondly, an Aristotelian hylomorphic philosophy of matter is integral with, and produces, the natural philosophy of Medieval Christendom. And thirdly, a modern Democritean atomism is integral with, and produces, modern science and technology