Entity

An entity is anything except for actual emptiness. It does not have to be sentient, or physical. It can be a thought, a concept, or a memory. The concept of emptiness is an entity, but emptiness itself is not.

In various paradigms, entities are often contrasted with a world beyond them, such as platonic forms and kantian noumenon and religious transcendence. There is, however, no need to conceive of a beyond or any form of ideal counterpart in order to consider the existence of entities.

In the context of systems, most entities are called elements, except for their interactions, which bind them into the system as a cohesive entity in itself. These two kinds of entities are the fundamental constituents of all systems and as such are called its units.