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Full Idea
The shapes, colours, sizes and weights which are predicated of body as accidents, ...and are known by sense-perception, must not be thought of as independent natures (for that is inconceivable).
Clarification
'Accidents' are contingent properties
Gist of Idea
The perceived accidental properties of bodies cannot be conceived of as independent natures
Source
Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 68)
Book Ref
Epicurus: 'The Epicurus Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B. /Gerson,L. [Hackett 1994], p.14
A Reaction
I take this to be an anti-platonist remark, though he is not denying that the accidental properties may have some universal character. I'm struck by how close the basic metaphysics of Epicurus is to that of Aristotle.
Related Ideas
Idea 14045 Accidental properties give a body its nature, but are not themselves bodies or parts of bodies [Epicurus]
Idea 14046 A 'body' is a conception of an aggregate, with properties defined by application conditions [Epicurus]
Idea 14047 Bodies have impermanent properties, and permanent ones which define its conceived nature [Epicurus]
| 10947 | Whiteness can be explained without man, but femaleness cannot be explained without animal [Aristotle] |
| 16644 | The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle] |
| 14044 | The perceived accidental properties of bodies cannot be conceived of as independent natures [Epicurus] |
| 14045 | Accidental properties give a body its nature, but are not themselves bodies or parts of bodies [Epicurus] |
| 16645 | Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent] |
| 16643 | Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura] |
| 11201 | Properties have an incomplete essence, with definitions referring to their subject [Aquinas] |
| 16641 | Whiteness does not exist, but by it something can exist-as-white [Aquinas] |
| 16665 | There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez] |
| 16666 | A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez] |
| 16668 | Modes of things exist in some way, without being full-blown substances [Gassendi] |
| 16730 | If matter is entirely atoms, anything else we notice in it can only be modes [Gassendi] |
| 16670 | Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes] |
| 17171 | A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza] |
| 16669 | Everything that exists is either a being, or some mode of a being [Malebranche] |
| 18353 | Modes are beings that are related both to substances and to universals [Lowe] |
| 16662 | The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau] |