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, also known as Platonic idealism or Platonic realism, is a philosophical theory credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. A major concept in metaphysics, the theory suggests that the physical w ...

* 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 Property ...

, 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 individual ...

* 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 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 with other expressions. The resulting expression is called a ''su ...

, 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 computer science, an instance is an occurrence of a software element that is based on a type definition. When created, an occurrence is said to have been ''instantiated'', and both the creation process and the result of creation are called '' ...

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

Row (database) In a relational database, a row or " record" or " tuple", represents a single, implicitly structured data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, s ...

* 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 ...

(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 or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

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 u ...

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

body of knowledge A body of knowledge (BOK or BoK) is the complete set of concepts, terms and activities that make up a professional domain, as defined by the relevant learned society or professional association.Oliver, G.R. (2012). ''Foundations of the Assumed Bus ...

* Cline of instantiation, a concept in systemic functional linguistics. * Instance (knowledge representation), a member of a class {{Disambiguation