Qualities, Quantities, and the Endurant-Perdurant Distinction in Top-Level Ontologies.
Ingvar Johansson · 2005
Abstract. The distinction between endurants and perdurants plays a prominent role in influential top-level ontologies in information science. But how are quantified qualities such as length and mass related to this distinction? In order to answer this question and see its consequences, one has to pay careful attention to the distinctions between: particulars and universals, persisting and instantaneous particulars, determinable and determinate universals. It is argued that robust top-level ontologies that classify particulars have to rely on other taxonomic principles than those who, like traditional science, classify universals. 1