X2M.161 – Quiddity | Starfield Astrocyte
Quiddity (quidditas, “whatness”) designates the essence of a thing insofar as it instructs the intellect in the answer to “what is it?”¹ It is the forma totius — the “complete essential determination” — aligned with Aristotle’s phrase τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (“the what was to be”).²
• Scholastic nuance: Essence = capacity for existence; quiddity = capacity to inform the intellect.³
• Aristotelian scope: The “what was to be” has both intellectual and ontological connotations — not only definable composites but also simple natures, even divine.⁴
• Theological dimension: Quiddity finds its fullness as idea eternally present to the divine mind.⁵
Paradise Lost obscured quiddity, twisting creation’s essence. Paradise Regained restores it through transfiguration: Christ, the “express image” (Heb. 1:3), unveils what creation was to be. In PH12, quiddity becomes the Starchild’s blueprint of adoption: each form revealed in its true determination, each essence radiant in glory.
Thus X2M.161 anchors the Astrocyte arc: quiddity as clarified map, not invention of intellect but disclosure of creation’s inner truth. As Korzybski warned, “the map is not the territory,”⁶ yet in Christ the map becomes transparent to the true territory — essence unveiled, quiddity glorified.
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Footnotes
¹ R.J. Deferrari, A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Boston, 1960), 883–884.
² Aristotle, Metaphysics 1029b14–1032a11; Thomas Aquinas, In 7 Metaphysicorum lect. 5.
³ Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia 1, 3.
⁴ Aristotle, Topica 101b22; Metaphysics 1031a15–32a11.
⁵ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 3; In 2 Sent. 3.1.1.
⁶ Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity (1933).
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