ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the subject-in-process as the ultimate unit of being to the subject-matter of the three speculative sciences, physics, mathematics, and theology and demonstrates the point that contrariety is relevant only to 'natures' which form the subject-matter of physics. It explores ousia in the sense of subject-in-process in its encompassing meaning as a locus and principle of teleological processes and shows how the four causes are meaningful principles of understanding only in reference to process. The chapter aims to exhibit the necessity of the ontological priority of process distributively understood for any sound analysis of contrariety, which as a principle of understanding substance is the object of study of no other science than that of First Philosophy. Contrariety is both a generic trait and a principle of organization of the cognizable aspects of all functions and actualizations. The study of the metaphysical contrarieties and of the principle of contrariety falls outside the orbit of the particular sciences.
