Electric Charge and Actuality

Aristotle's principle--Actuality is prior to Potentiality--is primarily directed at Plato's Theory of Forms, entailing that a Form is not a self-subsistent entity, but is abstracted from concrete experience.  Now, the principle can be extended to any abstraction from Actuality, e. g. to the concept of electric charge, which, as has been previously discussed, though commonly conceived as a property inhering in a particle, is, in fact, abstracted from actual Attractions and Repulsions into which the particle enters.  Furthermore, the principle is similarly applicable to the concept of the bearer of charge, and, indeed, to that of any individual substance.  Thus, even though Atomism is, because of its association with Nominalism, often conceived as antithetical to Platonism, an extension of it to Aristotle's anti-Platonist principle undermines that purported antithesis.  So, electric charge, as it is commonly conceived, suffices for Scientific and Technological purposes, but is implicated in more complicated Philosophical issues.