ABSTRACT
Some entities have traditionally been considered major, relative to other, minor entities. Minor entities are also interesting because their concepts can be usefully taken to constitute limit cases of certain key concepts. This chapter considers three kinds of minor entities – surfaces, holes and shadows as representative of classes of conceptual tensions and metaphysical complexities. Surfaces are paradigmatic of a tension between concreteness and abstractness; holes, of a tension between space and objects- and shadows add a dynamic side to these both. Shadows are usefully characterized, prima facie, as holes in light; they therefore inherit some of the metaphysically interesting features of holes, whereby the role of the material object host is now taken on by light. In particular, like holes, shadows are dependent entities; they have location, shape and size; and they have individuation principles that mimic those of holes.
