A Substance

An essentially ordered unity which bears what is predicated of a being. The substance is the substratum and is posited in substance theory to account for property compresence.

For example, iron is comprised of molecules ordered towards the whole (i.e., the iron) which makes those molecules incapable of remaining in its particular molecular structure if the iron is destroyed or transformed to another element. It is not metaphysically possible to have destroy the, e.g., iron bar such that it is no longer iron and it’s iron molecules to remain in their particular molecular structure: this is an essential ordering towards the whole. This iron has many properties and they are not floating around each other in a manner where we nominally associate then with one being. Instead, the compresence which is the ‘glue’ for these properties is the subsisting and underlying reality which is the subject of our predication of those properties. E.g., the smoothness and shape of the iron bar is bore in one and the same underlying reality which bears them; and this underlying reality which is the bearer is the iron’s substance (viz., it is the substrate which bears).

On the other hand, a chair is unified by its form; but it is not a subsisting unity which bears properties: it’s parts are the substances or remnants of a substance which bears the properties. E.g., the wooden leg of a chair bears the roughness and shape of the wood—not the chair as a whole itself as a substance. The wood which is the material of the chair leg is a remnant of a substance, namely the wooden tree. Because of this, a chair is an artifact