Substance ontology

Substance ontology is the metaphysical framework that treats stable, enduring entities — substances — as the fundamental constituents of reality. In this view, change is a modification of substances that persist underneath their transformations: a tree grows, but the tree-substance remains the same tree. The framework dominates Western philosophy from Aristotle through Descartes and into modern analytic metaphysics, where it persists in debates about personal identity, mereology, and the ontology of quantum objects.

The core commitment is that reality has a bottom