Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

earth and water to take on the properties of the various substances we know in the world. Quintessence delivered something else. An

essential character, we could say. And often this involved some kind of moral aspect. The

fifth element is often known as love. Does this help in the scientific quest for a substrate? Probably we are forced to say – not yet! Too much magic in quintessence, even

without Heaven or God.

So let’s press on to consider the meaning of essence.

I’ll consider two meanings provided by ancient philosophy:

What’s left of a substance when all its qualities are removed. And:

The thing about a substance that makes it unique from other substances.

(I’ve used the word substance in these definitions, but its probably not crucial to the argument if we were to substitute ‘thing’ or ‘something’.)

Taking the first of these definitions, clearly this was the dilemma posed at the start of this essay. There seem to be only qualities, so for now we seem forced to conclude, on this basis, that essence does not exist. But the more mysterian definition of form offered a solution to the ancients, as well as some later philosophers. Or we could say that quintessence is the thing that is beyond our everyday qualities – that quintessence delivers essence.

But it’s the second definition of essence that perhaps offers us greater scope. What is it that is unique to a thing? What makes a thing into a something? It is relationship. Every object has a unique relationship to its surroundings and to other objects. And we could say that this exists

70