Substance

Commonly, substance is what is produced by an organization; the essence of the contents of something ("the substantial moëlle one" (F. Rabelais); what one consumes.

From a point of view or , substance is the permanent reality which is used as substrate with the changing attributes. The substance is what remains below appearances, without changes, and is opposed to the variable accidents, contingent qualities. The term comes from Latin substare, to be held upright; of substantia, which is below, the support.

Within the traditional framework of , substance was retained like the first of the seven categories in the theory of the categories worked out by the systems Nyâya and Vaiseshika ; the latter being a philosophy of nature. On its side, it substituent the idea of an evolution to that of one to be stable rejette le concept de substance. For him, the world rests on "dharmas", factors making the existences transitory possible in the form of .

Feel first

The substance is conceived like existing by oneself, because, in the contrary case, it would be attribute another being and substance only in one relative direction.

That raises the question to know which are the beings which are without the help of any other, which is thus substance in a direction first and abolu. God alone is this independent substance, according to and for example.

The man like substance

From there several manners rise of conceiving it :

• the man is substance with regard to nature, but not in comparison of ;
• the man is not a substance, but one of the divine substance or of .

In the first case, the man can be held for a free being, one worsen in an empire although it subsite with the assistance of ; on the other hand, in the second case, the man as a modification of a total substance is determined by the laws of this one (which it acts of a god immanent or nature).

Substances and knowledge

Nature usually presents identifiable forms to us: a sheet, a cobweb, a?uf. But, one meets also less familiar elements: resin, ash, clay, as well as the various matters that the produced body. Deprived of clean form, these matters escape to us materially as well as certain way conceptually. They are substances.

Let us consider thus a?uf, so naturally beautiful and promising; if it has suddenly slipped to us of the fingers, the burst?uf loses its natural cohesion. This was a future bird, now one is in the presence of two unexpected substances; substances quite different and which interpenetrate without mixing, by circumventing the fragments from the shell: what is this? What became this so volatile bird?

Scientifically, one thus speaks naturally about substance in a context of ignorance.

The first role of - assisted sometimes of the physicist - is to push back ignorance while carrying out the identification, or characterization, of any substance of some origin. Its methods and tools make it possible to push back or circumvent the limits of the directions and the common experiment: it proceeds to one . In the second time, its knowledge will enable him to proceed to syntheses, even of nonnatural substances that it will name produced artificial or of synthesis.

thus makes generally call at the end substance when no other characteristic can usefully indicate or define the body in question. To thus start in time preceding the operations by analysis, for example, various substances are brought in poisons centres, that they are powders, solutions, etc.

If the analysis, the identification, are profitable, chemist A resorts in the term representative of the knowledge of : this is , this is one , one , one ... But, if the analysis reveals a mixture, it is still constrained to use the substance term: is one , but a radium ore is one substance radioactive, or milk is one substance food of animal origin, etc. The?uf appears thus made up to him of two bodies - an organics and a mineral - (it of the white and it of the shell) and one substance complex (yellow), whose inventory is entrusted to ...

See too

• Substance (Spinoza), such as defined in Ethics.
• Illicit substance (or )
• social substance, recognition of all the individuals of a company
• , on interpretation by the man of the nature of certain substances, and other states of the matter such as fire.