Current interpretations of Aquinas often attribute to him the claim that no artifact is a substance, or, more precisely, the claim that, (A1) No artifact is a substance in virtue of its form. Robert Pasnau, for example, tells us that “Aquinas is committed to the view that all artifacts are nonsubstances with respect to their form.” And Eleonore Stump writes: "An artifact is thus a composite of things configured together into a whole but not by a substantial form. Since only (...) something configured by a substantial form is a substance, no artifact is a substance." In fact, however, Aquinas’s position on the metaphysical status of artifacts is more nuanced than these standard interpretations suppose. This paper will examine three hitherto overlooked passages in Aquinas’s writings in an attempt to clarify his position, and to show how it (his actual position) can overcome some of the philosophical problems which pose difficulties for the stronger claims often attributed to him. (shrink)

Table of Formal and Descriptivists Ontologists (PDF - from Bernard Bolzano to present time) Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries (a selection of critical judgments about some of the greatest philosophers of the recent past) Living Ontologists (a list of authors with an interest in ontology, with synthetic bibliographies).

The relationship between Ars and Natura undergoes a manifest evolution from Aristotle to the medieval period and the time of Walter Burley. While Aristotle views all the possible complementarities between natural things and artificial things with regard to their perfection, the medieval commentators from Doctor planus and perspicuus on define artificialia in natural philosophy increasingly as perfect figures in actuality, divisible and with infinitely arrangeable parts. In Burley's works in particular, the products of art are likened to geometrical figures within (...) the structure of the continuous, such as lines, points and surfaces, and used as arguments against Ockham in their dispute over the ontology of indivisibles. (shrink)