 But if the world is a world of things, what are they in general? What things, individuals, or objects are is itself a controversial and murky matter, and goes beyond the purview of this article (for more, see these related entries:  object,  ordinary objects,  sortals,  substance). Related terms in philosophy for ‘thing’ are  substance,[4] primary substance, particular, concrete particular, existent, being, entity, substratum, term, and so on. For the purposes of this entry, we will take a rather minimalistic view of thinghood. We will regard a thing or object as whatever satisfies this definition: