In metaphysics , particulars or individuals are usually contrasted with universals . Universals concern features that can be exemplified by various different particulars. Particulars are often seen as concrete, spatiotemporal entities as opposed to abstract entities, such as properties or numbers. There are, however, theories of abstract particulars or tropes . For example, Socrates is a particular (there's only one Socrates-the-teacher-of-Plato and one cannot make copies of him, e.g., by cloning him, without introducing new, distinct particulars). Redness, by contrast, is not a particular, because it is abstract and multiply instantiated (for example a bicycle, an apple, and a particular woman's hair can all be red). In the nominalist view, everything is particular. A universal at each moment in time, from the point of view of an observer, is a set of particulars.
4-420: Sybil Wolfram writes: Particulars include only individuals of a certain kind: as a first approximation individuals with a definite place in space and time, such as persons and material objects or events, or which must be identified through such individuals, like smiles or thoughts. Some terms are used by philosophers with a rough-and-ready idea of their meaning. This can occur if there is lack of agreement about
8-718: Is spatial and temporal or not. This article about metaphysics is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sybil Wolfram Sybil Wolfram (born Sybille Misch ; 1 July 1931 in Berlin–26 July 1993) was an English philosopher and writer, of Austrian Jewish origin. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford and was a Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall at University of Oxford from 1964 to 1993. She published two books, Philosophical Logic: An Introduction (1989) and In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (1987). She
12-524: The best definition of the term. In formulating a solution to the problem of universals , the term 'particular' can be used to describe the particular instance of redness of a certain apple as opposed to the 'universal' 'redness' (being abstract ). The term particular is also used as a modern equivalent of the Aristotelian notion of individual substance. Used in this sense, particular can mean any concrete (individual) entity, irrespective of whether it
16-468: Was the translator of Claude Lévi-Strauss 's La pensée sauvage ( The Savage Mind ), but later disavowed the translation when she discovered the publisher had made changes to the translation that neither she nor Lévi-Strauss had authorized. She was the mother of computer scientist Stephen Wolfram and British technologist and businessman Conrad Wolfram . She was the daughter of criminologist and psychoanalyst Kate Friedlander (1902–1949), an expert on
#750249