Unidentified Flying Hyperobject

Thinking Beyond the Goldilocks Ontology

But then we have to ask, of course, what this class comprises. We are given, as examples, 'familiar objects'--chairs, tables, pictures, books, flowers, pens, cigarettes . . . . But does the ordinary man believe that what he perceives is (always) something like furniture, or like these other 'familiar objects'—moderate-sized specimens of dry goods?

— J.L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia

There are many senses in which a thing may be said to “be”, but they are related to one central point, one definite kind of thing, and are not homonymous . . . . and unity is nothing apart from being; and if, further, the essence of each this is one in no merely accidental way, and similarly is from its very nature something that is: — all this being so, there must be exactly as many species of being as of unity.

— Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book IV, Ch. 1 (Ross translation)

What, for example is the size of IBM, or the Red Army, or the French Ministry of Education, or the world market? To be sure, these are all actors of great size, since they mobilize hundreds of thousands or even millions of agents . . . Yet there is an Ariadne’s thread that would allow us to pass with continuity from the local to the global, form the human to the nonhuman. It is the thread of networks of practices and instruments, of documents and translations . . . . The only difference stems from the fact that they are made up of hybrids and have to mobilize a great number of objects for their description . . . . [T]he modern world appeared disenchanted, drained of its mysteries, dominated by sleek forces of pure immanence on which humans alone imposed some symbolic dimension and in which there existed, perhaps, the transcendence of the crossed-out God. Now if there is no immanence, if there are only networks, agents, actants, we cannot be disenchanted. Humans are not the ones who arbitrarily add the “symbolic dimension” to pure material forces. These forces are as transcendent, active, agitated, spiritual, as we are.

— Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern

A model does not assert that something is so, it simply illustrates a particular mode of observation.

Carl Jung, “On the Nature of Psyche”

In our common folk ontologies we tend to privilege what J.L. Austin famously (at least among analytic philosophers) called “moderate-sized specimens of dried goods.” For example, if I were to ask my son Cormac to enumerate all the things in our backyard on a spring afternoon, he would probably produce a list including the black walnut tree, the garage, the various toys left out, his older brother cutting the lawn, the lawnmower, the flowers, the bees, and probably the odd garter snake or two scared out into the open by the lawnmower. Notice, however, that Cormac’s list would, strictly speaking, leave a lot out! For example, there are legions of very small things out there that he would likely fail to include, e.g., the bacteria in the soil, the oxygen atoms in the air, and the photons radiating from the sun. Moreover, Cormac would likewise leave out a great many abstract things that are, in some sense, in the yard, e.g., the green of the trees, the mass of the bees, and the width of the yard itself.¹ Sure, qualitative and quantitative attributes aren’t the same sort of things as bees and trees, but they are things. Trees, bees, and yards cannot exist without attributes (being in certain qualitative and quantitative ways), so the latter have some sort of being along with the former.

I also doubt that Cormac would include bigger things, such as the utility company that owns the power lines or the neighborhood association organizing the weekend’s block party (in preparation for which his older brother is cutting the lawn). Nevertheless, these organizations are in some sense present (at least through their effects); the being of the utility company and the being of the block association are necessary parts of the explanation of what is going on in the yard. Once again, utility companies and neighborhood associations aren’t the same kind of things as power lines, lawnmowers, or older brothers, but they are things in some sense. Utility companies and neighborhood associations make a difference for the activities of power lines and older brothers, so we can’t outright deny them thing-hood. If something has an effect, then it must be, in one way or another, along with the things it is influencing. As my dissertation advisor used to remind me: “Everything is a thing. It’s just a question of how we order them.”