Instantiation or instance may refer to:

Philosophy

* A modern concept similar to ''participation'' in classical Platonism; see the

Theory of Forms The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, fuzzy concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas. According to this theory, ideas in th ...

* The

instantiation principle The instantiation principle or principle of instantiation or principle of exemplification is the concept in metaphysics and logic (first put forward by David Malet Armstrong) that there can be no uninstantiated or unexemplified properties (or univer ...

, the idea that in order for a property to exist, it must be had by some object or substance; the instance being a specific object rather than the idea of it *

Universal instantiation In predicate logic, universal instantiation (UI; also called universal specification or universal elimination, and sometimes confused with '' dictum de omni'') is a valid rule of inference from a truth about each member of a class of individuals ...

* An

instance (predicate logic) In predicate logic, universal instantiation (UI; also called universal specification or universal elimination, and sometimes confused with '' dictum de omni'') is a valid rule of inference from a truth about each member of a class of individual ...

, a statement produced by applying universal instantiation to a universal statement *

Existential fallacy The existential fallacy, or existential instantiation, is a formal fallacy. In the existential fallacy, one presupposes that a class has members when one is not supposed to do so; i.e., when one should not assume existential import. Not to be c ...

, also called existential instantiation * A

substitution instance Substitution is a fundamental concept in logic. A substitution is a syntactic transformation on formal expressions. To apply a substitution to an expression means to consistently replace its variable, or placeholder, symbols by other expressions. ...

, a formula of mathematical logic that can be produced by substituting certain strings of symbols for others in formula, also can be used as the mathematical order to represent the data in an algorithm

Computing

Instance (computer science) In a computer system, any time a new context is created based on some model, it is said that the model has been instantiated. In practice, this instance usually has a data structure in common with other instances, but the values stored in the inst ...

, referring to any running process, or specifically to an object as an instance of a class * Table instance (or database instance), a concept in database design; see Row (database) * Creation of an

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

(a location in memory having a value and possibly referenced by an identifier) * Instance can refer to a single

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

in a virtualized or cloud computing environment that provides operating-system-level virtualization

Other uses

Instance dungeon In massively multiplayer online games, an instance is a special area, typically a dungeon, that generates a new copy of the location for each group, or for a certain number of players, that enters the area. Instancing, the general term for the use ...

, a feature of many online videogames * Instantiation of a class or object within the organization of a body of knowledge *

Cline of instantiation The cline of instantiation is a concept in systemic functional linguistics theory. Alongside stratification and metafunction, it is one of the global semiotic dimensions that define the organization of language in context. According to Michael ...

, a concept in systemic functional linguistics. {{Disambiguation