substance (Substance)

An Object in which every part is similar to every other in every relevant respect. More precisely, something is a Substance when it has only arbitrary pieces as parts - any parts have properties which are similar to those of the whole. Note that a Substance may nonetheless have physical properties that vary. For example, the temperature, chemical constitution, density, etc. may change from one part to another. An example would be a body of water.

Ontology

SUMO / BASE-ONTOLOGY

Superclass(es)

entity

physical

object

self connected object

substance

Subclass(es)

pure substance mixture biologically active substance

Coordinate term(s)

content bearing object corpuscular object food

Constrains relations

material piece

Related WordNet synsets

substance: the stuff of which an object consists
material, stuff: the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object; "coal is a hard black material"; "wheat is the stuff they use to make bread"

See more related synsets on a separate page.

Axioms (5)

If objecttype is a subclass of substance and object is an instance of objecttype and part is a part of object, then part is an instance of objecttype.

(=>
      (and
            (subclass ?OBJECTTYPE Substance)
            (instance ?OBJECT ?OBJECTTYPE)
            (part ?PART ?OBJECT))
      (instance ?PART ?OBJECTTYPE))

If obj is an instance of substance and attr is an attribute of obj and part is a part of obj, then attr is an attribute of part.

(=>
      (and
            (instance ?OBJ Substance)
            (attribute ?OBJ ?ATTR)
            (part ?PART ?OBJ))
      (attribute ?PART ?ATTR))

corpuscular object is disjoint from substance.

(disjoint CorpuscularObject Substance)

If obj is an instance of corpuscular object, then there exist substance substance1,substance substance2 so that substance1 is made of obj and substance2 is made of obj and substance1 is not equal to substance2.

(=>
      (instance ?OBJ CorpuscularObject)
      (exists
            (?SUBSTANCE1 ?SUBSTANCE2)
            (and
                  (subclass ?SUBSTANCE1 Substance)
                  (subclass ?SUBSTANCE2 Substance)
                  (material ?SUBSTANCE1 ?OBJ)
                  (material ?SUBSTANCE2 ?OBJ)
                  (not
                        (equal ?SUBSTANCE1 ?SUBSTANCE2)))))

obj is an instance of substance if and only if there exists physical state attr so that attr is an attribute of obj.

(<=>
      (instance ?OBJ Substance)
      (exists
            (?ATTR)
            (and
                  (instance ?ATTR PhysicalState)
                  (attribute ?OBJ ?ATTR))))