From a realistic perspective, everything has two main principles the matter and the form.

From an idealistic point of view, and also from the outlook of modern science and particularly Psychology, the "pattern" or form of things are in human minds instead being in living and not living things.

Aristotle says that a table is a table because of its form or μορφἠ. Modern science considers that a table is a table because someone made it following the idea of table he/she had had in his/her mind previously.