Aristotle was one of Plato's most famous pupils and though they shared a teacher and student relationship, Aristotle had quite different philosophies and theories than his educator. Plato, a former student himself of Socrates, had a firm interest in the type of philosophy that examined the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. Plato believed strongly in his theory of forms, that basically being that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world. Aristotle believed in forms as well, just not in the same way Plato did.
Universals are that of which don't exist in the way that ordinary physical objects exist. Universals are the idea or thought of an object that physically exists. If a person were to think of a truck in their minds, they could not imagine or picture what truck looks like, because truck is just the idea of a real existing physical object. The only thing people can do when they try to picture ?truck' in their minds, is remember what a truck looks like that they've already physically seen. The properties of the truck people picture in their head are referred to as ?forms'. There is a form for every type of object in reality. There are forms of dogs, forms of mountains, human beings, there are forms of colors, and the list could go on. It's possible to picture what the color red looks like in one's head, however it is not possible to imagine what the word color itself looks like in our heads. That is because color is a universal, and red is a form. To be even more specific, there are different shades of the color red, there is dark red, light red, and others shades of red. These are referred to as ...