Card 1.1.1 · Root I — Metaphysics
Substance Theory
Is a river a thing, or an event?
Substance theory asks what the basic things are: enduring bearers of properties that undergo change, bundles of properties with no bearer, or processes that we carve into apparent things.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 1.1 Ontology, alongside 1.1.2 Universals, 1.1.3 Mereology and 1.1.4 Abstract objects.
New to metaphysics? Read the guide
The rival answers
| Position | Claim | The cost |
|---|---|---|
| Substance ontology | Enduring things are basic; change is what happens to them | Must say what persists when every property alters |
| Process philosophy | Events and becoming are basic; things are stable patterns in flux | Must explain why the world presents itself as furniture |
| Bundle theory | There is no underlying thing, only a bundle of properties | Two indiscernible bundles become one thing |
| Trope theory | Properties are themselves particular; objects are their compresence | Needs primitive exact resemblance to do the work of universals |
| Substratum theory | A bare particular underlies the properties | Critics call it a propertyless "I know not what"; defenders reply that it has properties by instantiating them |
Where do you stand?
Is a river a thing, or an event?
One tap, no sign-up. You can change your answer at any time. Answers are counted anonymously.
Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heraclitus | c. 540–480 BCE | Greek | Change as constitutive of things: the same river, ever-different waters (B12); "you cannot step in twice" is Plato’s report |
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Substance as the primary category; form and matter |
| Zhuangzi | late 4th c. BCE | Chinese Daoist | Transformation as the basic condition of things |
| Vasubandhu | c. 4th–5th c. CE | Indian Buddhist | Momentariness argued in technical detail |
| Mulla Sadra | c. 1571–1640 | Islamic | Substantial motion — motion in the category of substance itself |
| Wang Fuzhi | 1619–1692 | Chinese | qi as the sole reality, li as its pattern — often read as materialist, a label now contested |
| A. N. Whitehead | 1861–1947 | Process | Systematic process metaphysics; actual occasions, not objects |
Also on this question: Gilles Deleuze Zhang Zai
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Existence & being:
- If the One cannot be described, how did Plotinus manage to write so much about it? 6 replies
- Reading group: Porphyry’s Isagoge and the three questions he refused to answer 6 replies
- Rāmānuja’s question ‘whose ignorance?’ is the objection Advaita never answered 6 replies
- Reading group: A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936), chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6 6 replies
- Is Yogācāra “consciousness-only” idealism? Three readings and a false friend 6 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Existence & being
Connections
→ 1.1 · ↔ 1.1.3, 1.4.1, 1.11, 6.11 · ◇ substance ontology, process philosophy, bundle theory, trope theory, substratum theory · ○ Axial Age; Early modern; Table 1
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 24.