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Ontology. Ontology is the philosophical study of being. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines what all entities have in common and how they are divided into fundamental classes, known as categories.
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, [1] is an approach in philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only real experience of everyday living. [2] In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process ...
Potentiality and actuality. In philosophy, potentiality and actuality[1] are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima. [2]
Four causes. Aristotle 's Four Causes illustrated for a table: material (wood), formal (structure), efficient (carpentry), final (dining). The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?" in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient ...
Ontological priority is a philosophy concept that was first introduced by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in c. 350 BCE, in his significantly influential book Categories. [1] For over two millennia, this concept influenced and continues to influence the reasonings of many philosophers (e.g., Aristotelians) and some discussion in ontology and logic. [2]
Medieval ontology was strongly influenced by Aristotle's teachings. The thinkers of this period often relied on Aristotelian categories like substance, act and potency, or matter and form to formulate their own theories. Important ontologists in this epoch include Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. [16] [17] [18]
Aristotle used the term "substance" (Greek: οὐσία ousia) in a secondary sense for genera and species understood as hylomorphic forms.Primarily, however, he used it with regard to his category of substance, the specimen ("this person" or "this horse") or individual, qua individual, who survives accidental change and in whom the essential properties inhere that define those universals.
Aristotle's ontology places the universal (katholou) in particulars (kath' hekaston), things in the world, whereas for Plato the universal is a separately existing form which actual things imitate. For Aristotle, "form" is still what phenomena are based on, but is "instantiated" in a particular substance.