The Ontology of Matter. Epekeina vol. 6 n. 2/2015

How do we experience matter? Does it present itself to the senses? Or is it only an empty substratum that cannot be grasped if deprived of all sensible qualities? Is it perceived as a continuum, or rather intellectually reconstructed through mental and logical forms? Or is it that the very idea of a continuum is itself the outcome of mental abstraction? The nature of matter has been a central issue for philosophy since its inception. The constant oscillation of ancient thought between ma er as indeterminateness that does not have a concept and does not even properly exist - and matter as a principle that allows one to think plurality and otherness, that reaches even into the realm of the in…