display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 16118 | Nature is an active principle of change, like potentiality, but it is intrinsic to things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature [phusis] is in the same genus as dunamis [power/potential], for it is an active principle of change, but not in another thing but in the thing itself qua itself. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1049a09) | |
| A reaction: [Gill's translation; Lawson-Tancred refers to 'A nature' rather than 'nature', which implies an essence]. It seems like phusis is intrinsic, and dunamis is relational. Two sorts of power? |
| 15768 | An actuality is usually thought to be a process [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: An actuality is thought most normally to be a process. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a30) | |
| A reaction: He comments of this that he wishes to include entelechies (unified items) in the general account, and not just processes. To present everything as fundamentally a process is a hard story to tell with full coherence, I think. |
| 8978 | Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1 | |
| A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right. |