  Many philosophers who have sought to say what sorts of entities works of art are have spoken of ‘types’ and ‘tokens’, an idiom which can be traced back to Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–1958, IV, para. 537, 423). (For background, including a discussion of Peirce’s statements on the topic, see the entry on types and tokens.) One idea that some art ontologists have found promising is that as a special sort of abstraction, types have features that should be kept in mind as we seek to solve the paradox of creation and other vexed issues, such as the question of how a work of art can have particular perceptible qualities if it is an imperceptible abstract object. As becomes apparent below, however, the conclusions on this score have been quite diverse.