As to Plato or Aristotle, I don’t want to place a label on these words, but obviously you are free to do so.
I would begin by putting aside the idea of objects and think information, which would be our mental understanding about forms that exist.
Let’s suppose that the initial “form” was “light”, a fundamental energy, prime matter, whatever the name, it is at the foundation of created being. That primordial boundless, undifferentiated form of existence, split up into finite being came with the creation of cyclical progressive time, from an eternal Fountain of Being, Triune in nature - Love. What followed were the basic, subatomic, building blocks of matter. Out of that plasma, the atom was brought into being as a whole system in itself. All along, what has been created are individual forms of being which exist in relation to what is other to themselves; they can become “entangled”, become part of an encompassing system, whole in itself - that is how a cup of hot water in a room cools down and we are individual members of one humanity broken in sin and one in love.
Atoms do not reproduce themselves, although they can grow from Hydrogen up the periodic table, constituted as they are of the various quarks and stuff. The relationships they have with one another, at that level of creation, is what we study in chemistry.
The next step in the hierarchy of existent things would be unicellular creatures, which are whole beings in themselves. The “soul”, that which makes this form what it is, has the capablity of reproduction. Informed by atoms coming together as molecules, these creatures incorporate matter that is other to themselves and split into two cells.
There are plants that possess the same qualities, and according to some demonstrate the beginnings of a psychological dimension. It would not be very sophisticated, but they are existent things that react to their environment.
Animals clearly demonstrate “mind” in the organization of their nervous systems, which gives them instinctive perceptions, cognitive awareness, as well as emotional and behavioural reactions. Their “soul” is the organizational principle for the cells which have diversifed into tissues of various organ systems including the brain, whose functional structure, in human beings, is said to rival in complexity of all the stars in all the galaxies of the universe.
Within the unified totality of our being right here and now as we perceive, think, feel and act as one person existing in relation to what is other to ourselves, we can identify a physical component of cells, made up of molecules, made up of quarks etc., all of this goes into the making of what we are and here experience.
This did not “evolve” as a result of random chemical activity, but has been determined by over-riding organizational principles which define each level in the hierarchy of creation from the simplest atom to we ourselves who are its crown, in Christ able to come face to face with God.
