Instantiation or instance may refer to:
Philosophy
- A modern concept similar to participation in classical Platonism; see the Theory of Forms
- The instantiation principle, 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
- An instance (predicate logic), a statement produced by applying universal instantiation to a universal statement
- Existential fallacy, also called existential instantiation
- A substitution instance, a formula of mathematical logic that can be produced by substituting certain strings of symbols for others in formulae
Computing
- Instance (computer science), 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 (a location in memory having a value and possibly referenced by an identifier)
- Instance can refer to a single virtual machine in a virtualized or cloud computing environment that provides operating-system-level virtualization
Other uses
- Instance dungeon, a feature of many online videogames
- Instantiation of a class or object within the organization of a body of knowledge