Hupokeitai DIKHŌS: the two-stage domain

The three very broad points of perspective reviewed in §17: (i) the size and depth of the world, (ii) the vertical, organizational moment in differentia and genus, and (iii) the connection of form and unity, are by no means exhaustive of the metaphysical morals derivable from the biology; but they are already sufficient to give the outlines of the kind of universe that Aristotelean metaphysics puts up to correspond to (or in contemporary terms, to serve as a “model” for) the distinction that was floated in §8 between “constitutive” and “characterizing” things-predicated.

It is a universe (“model”) of two levels or stages.

Metaphysical framework: outline of the static picture

The upper stage is that of the individual substances and their accidental attachments, inherents or “coincidences” (sumbebēkota); it is in most respects – though not completely – identical with the entire universe of the Categories. Based as it is on a domain of well-distinguished substantial individuals, to which attach or “coincide” (or in which inhere) the various qualities and so on, it also bears some slight affinity, to that extent at least, to the sorts of structures that can be thought of as models for present-day formal languages analyzed in terms of standard first-order quantification theory that were mentioned briefly in §8, although the comparison is highly extrinsic, most anachronistic, and made at all only to point the contrast that follows.

The lower stage is that of the shaping-up of the individual substances through form out of matter, and accordingly it is matter rather than discrete individual “thisses” that is cast in the logical-semantical role of subject of predication.