directions. What we see is a complex of ideas on the same general level of
abstraction and reflexivity, which are shared out among the opposing intellec-
tual factions in the network.Nominalism versus Realism of Universals. Certain topics emerge in every
world network during the epistemology-metaphysics sequence. The issue of
universals arises early in both India and Greece, as soon as the cosmology
sequence has been upgraded to abstract consideration of epistemology. In
China, too, where the epistemology-metaphysics sequence does not get very
far, the School of Names at the climax of the intense debates during the ancient
Warring States appears to raise the nominalist-realist issue for a brief period.
To postulate universals is explicitly to recognize abstraction; thus it is not
surprising that the topic should arise virtually everywhere as one of the first
metaphysical questions. For how many generations debate continues on this
territory varies considerably, owing to external social conditions.
In India, universals are formulated noncontroversially as an item in the
Buddhist Abhidharma lists. Debate arose as abstract entities were attacked
within the Buddhist schools, first as nominal, then by an argument for radical
particularism: that the “suchness” of reality is inexpressible. The attack on
universals occurs repeatedly down through the medieval period of Indian
philosophy. As the attention space was divided between Buddhist and Hindu
schools, the former staked its turf ever more sharply on the destruction of any
realist position, including mild ones encompassing both universals and particu-
lars. The Hindu schools played their part in the polarization by taking increas-
ingly intransigeant stances, reifying virtually every new abstraction as it was
discovered. After Buddhism disappeared and its cultural capital was re-divided
on the Hindu side, the theological disputes between Advaita and the theist
schools resurrected the issue of universals and particulars as tools for arguing
over the tensions inherent in the concept of a single highest substance.
In Greek philosophy, the concept of universals emerges early, but opposition
to it is neither very prolonged nor radical. The limited nominalism of the
Sophists was directed not against concepts in general, but against the more
specific concepts of the ethical virtues. This debate catalyzed Plato to formulate
the very general concept of abstract Form. Antisthenes and his successors the
Cynics for a while opposed universal forms with a version of nominalism, but
more generally from distrust of all intellectual constructions; these schools
faded away into skepticism, holding no doctrines at all. Aristotle’s compromise
arranged a hierarchy of generality from the most encompassing universal down
through those of more limited scope to concrete particulars, and identified
particular beings with primary substance, universals with secondary substance
which cannot exist apart from particulars.
826 •^ Meta-reflections