What Killed Substantial Form?

What killed substantial form, and can it live again? Substantial form died at the beginning of the scientific revolution when a new method made it unnecessary and a new view of the senses revealed by this new method made it unknowable. Conway's Game of Life as a model for Mechanism reveals not only the problems that make it impossible for contemporary thinkers to take substantial form seriously, but also a way in which the idea might be revived in a different form. The proponent of substantial form in the modern world should not oppose mechanism, but should insist upon it. If a thoroughgoing mechanism is true, it implies its own limits and requires the resurrection of form in a way that even a mechanist could love.