The informational foundation of the act

Introduction We find the term “act” and its derivations; “action”, “actual”, “actuality”, “change and movement”, “living”, “existence”, “labor” “praxis”, etc., at the center of the history of the philosophy of the 20th Century. The concept “act” which appears in the metaphysics o Aristotle and then in the metaphysics of Scholasticism, from Latin actus “a doing or a driving, impulse; a part in a play” and actum “a thing done,” “to do, set in motion, drive, urge, chase, stir up”, is a basic concept to understand intentionality, technology and labor and any other concept that implies movement whatever intellectually or physically. In the Greek of the New Testament the word ergon is used to mean: “an act, deed, thing done” and related meanings. In the same context the word praxis is used to mean “a doing, a mode of acting, a deal, a transaction; the doings of the apostles; a thing to be done, business.” Just because of its semantic amplitude this term and related forms are problematic. Aristotle recurred to the term “actuality” to define change and movement as the consequence of the confrontation of substance and form. The first is general the second particular. Now, there is one class of existent things which we will call substances, including under the term: first, matter, which in itself is not a this or that, not a particular; second, shape or form in virtue of which it is then a this or that, a particular; third, the composition of the two. Matter is potentiality; form, actuality. And “actuality” is used in two ways: knowledge illustrated the one, exercise of knowledge the other. Aristotle introduces then, indirectly, a difference between “knowing” and “exercising knowledge”. “Aristotle’s terminological distinction in this regard is between poiesis as a kind of productive activity related to what is outside the agent and praxis as the activity concerned with the life (bios) of the