‘Being’: Aristotle To Einstein

Aristotle and the Lyceum philosophers proposed ten categories among which Substance was ontologically primary.

In other words, Substance is; and the world with its million features revolved around it.

The  idea had been around awhile in most early literate cultures. Earth [Prithvi] was the primary substance, the grounding element alongside Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Space [or ‘Sky’] and so on.

Get to ‘Substance’ and you get to the heart of the matter. It was the locus to which all attributes attach. ‘Matter’ remained unchanged as ‘Form’ evolved from Acorn to Oak, from Embryo to Man, in natural teleological fulfillment.

The material world matched the propositions of the propounded Logic. And Aristotle’s Logic in turn reflected the lines and contours of the propounded, modeled material world.

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Here is Albert Einstein [1879-1955] on: ‘What is Science?’

‘Science is the endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought, the perceptible phenomena of the world, into as thoroughgoing an association as possible.

To put it boldly, it is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of Existence [see Post] by the process of conceptualization…‘ [See Post. Immanuel Kant on the nature of ‘Concept’.

Later, in a less declarative, more reflective moment, he modified it. ‘There is neither Evolution…nor Destiny: only Being’.