Ontology — Kinds of EntitiesPage 4

Perhaps the most difficult task for the Ontologist is to discern what different kinds of Entities are possible (althought the related task of discerning what kinds of Entities actually exist must rank with this in difficulty). What must be borne in mind from the outset, however, is that the Syzygy itself, by way of the dynamical or transformational character of the so-called Void or Vacuumn, is already physical, in the original sense of this Greek word. For in Greek 'phuein', from which we get 'physical', means 'to sprout or generate', like the sprouting of a bud or the "coming forth", as it were, of an animal birth. But the Syzygy, as the Creative Resource, is nothing but the generator of the physical "world", and thus must be classified as physical.

Consequently, as long as we insist that the Syzygy generates all that exists, we are logically commited to saying that all that exists is, in at least one sense, physical. What is more, the word 'be', which is taken in Ontology as synonymous with 'exist', is etymologically related to the words 'phuein' and 'physical', because the word 'being' is historically derived from the same source as these two words. So the terms themselves that designate existence—Being—and an Entity—a Being—already imply the physical nature of the things they represent, and have done so from the outset of philosophy. The task for the ontologist, then, is to determine the nature of physical being, and whether this kind of being is truly singular and fundamental.

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