Philosophers around the world, including Sydney Shoemaker, Charles Martin, George Molnar, George Bealer, John Bigelow, Caroline Lierse, Evan Fales, Crawford Elder, Nicholas Maxwell, Nancy Cartwright, Roy Bhaskar and John Heil, have contributed to in various ways to its development.
The new essentialism is an emerging metaphysical perspective that is the culmination of many different attempts to arrive at a satisfactory post-Humean philosophy of nature.
However, this list of claimed allies has been disputed by Stephen Mumford, at least with regard to Shoemaker, Martin, Molnar, Heil and Cartwright.
Such powers are to either act or resist change within the bearer (e.g. temperature, elasticity).
Ellis argues that neither locations nor categorical properties such as shape and size are causal powers, yet they can make a difference in outcomes.