section_path: Topics/Particulars
section_name: Particulars
paragraph_text: Particulars
  
  Particulars are individual entities and include both concrete objects, like Aristotle, the Eiffel Tower, or a specific apple, and abstract objects, like the number 2 or a specific set in mathematics. Also called individuals, they are unique, non-repeatable entities and contrast with universals, like the color red, which can at the same time exist in several places and characterize several particulars. A widely held view is that particulars instantiate universals but are not themselves instantiated by something else, meaning that they exist in themselves while universals exist in something else. Substratum theory analyzes particulars as a substratum, also called bare particular, together with various properties. The substratum confers individuality to the particular while the properties express its qualitative features or what it is like. This approach is rejected by bundle theorists, who state that particulars are only bundles of properties without an underlying substratum. Some bundle theorists include in the bundle an individual essence, called haecceity, to ensure that each bundle is unique. Another proposal for concrete particulars is that they are individuated by their space-time location.
  
  Concrete particulars encountered in everyday life, like rocks, tables, and organisms, are complex entities composed of various parts. For example, a table is made up of a tabletop and legs, each of which is itself made up of countless particles. The relation between parts and wholes is studied by mereology. The problem of the many is about which groups of entities form mereological wholes, for instance, whether a dust particle on the tabletop forms part of the table. According to mereological universalists, every collection of entities forms a whole, meaning that the parts of the table without the dust particle form one whole while they together with it form a second whole. Mereological moderatists hold that certain conditions have to be fulfilled for a group of entities to compose a whole, for example, that the entities touch one another. Mereological nihilists reject the idea that there are any wholes. According to them, there are no tables and chairs but only particles that are arranged table-wise and chair-wise. A related mereological problem is whether there are simple entities that have no parts, as atomists claim, or not, as continuum theorists contend.