{"id":1374,"date":"2010-11-19T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/19\/things\/"},"modified":"2010-11-19T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:00:00","slug":"things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/19\/things\/","title":{"rendered":"things"},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . scribbled on a restaurant napkin:<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Things are always already in process.<\/p>\n

2. More complex things are more in process, or in more (and different) processes, than simpler things.<\/p>\n

3. Growing\/developing\/evolving things tend to become more complex. Other things tend to become less so.<\/p>\n

4. Being in process, things elude capture. Those that don’t<\/em> become other things, and generally simpler things, than they were.<\/p>\n

5. You can never do only one thing.<\/p>\n

6. You can never isolate one thing from the rest. When you try, that thing ceases to be what it is, or it drags other things with it.<\/p>\n

7. Knowing is doing; doing is knowing. But neither of them is only and fully the other.<\/p>\n

8. Every moment presents options. Its passing alters the options presented to future moments.<\/p>\n

9. Every action feeds a relation, tweaks a process, builds a network.<\/p>\n

10. A world full of things made by the human Thing makes it seem that things are merely<\/em> things, simple things, dead things. Even those<\/em> things aren’t that, but other<\/em> things certainly aren’t that.<\/p>\n

\"EA6929-005.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Notes<\/b>: <\/p>\n

(1) “Things” is a generic term for bits and pieces of world\/universe. Things do; things are done.<\/p>\n

(2) Complexity and simplicity are relative; entropy and negentropy are general trends. In reality, most things don’t just move all in one direction.<\/p>\n

(4) Everything becomes different from itself anyway. The question is always <\/b><\/em>what to become.<\/p>\n

(5) But you can try.<\/p>\n

(7) Form is substance; substance is form. But… same story.<\/p>\n

(9) Or many at once.<\/p>\n

(10) The “human Thing” includes humans, ruminants and cereal grasses, fossil fuels, cities, techno-economic networks, and an ever diversifying range of things made for the Thing and things made to <\/b><\/em>make other things for the Thing. Things made by the human Thing even seem to be getting livelier and more complex (e.g., digital life, nanotechnology, online worlds). We are building a complex (mega)network atop a complex (mega)network, but with relations between the two (Terra 1.0 and Terra 2.0, if you will) growing more tenuous and fragile.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . scribbled on a restaurant napkin: 1. Things are always already in process. 2. More complex things are more in process, or in more (and different) processes, than simpler things. 3. Growing\/developing\/evolving things tend to become more complex. Other things tend to become less so. 4. Being in process, things elude capture. Those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,4422],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4IC4a-things","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14231,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/09\/02\/process-semiotics-in-a-nutshell\/","url_meta":{"origin":1374,"position":0},"title":"Process semiotics, in a nutshell","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 2, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"It's what informs my analysis of images, imagination, and the digital in The New Lives of Images. Here is the three-minute version of it. The universe is a living, dynamic, and responsive universe. It is made not of static objects, but of events -- events which elicit other events. Its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/08\/20220422_133709-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/08\/20220422_133709-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/08\/20220422_133709-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/08\/20220422_133709-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/08\/20220422_133709-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/08\/20220422_133709-scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10471,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/11\/process-relational-ecologies-querying-some-terms\/","url_meta":{"origin":1374,"position":1},"title":"Process-relational ecologies: querying some terms","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It's wonderful to see that process-relational theory is getting noticed in the study of social-ecological systems. A new article in Ecology and Society, Garcia et al's \"Adopting process-relational perspectives to tackle the challenges of social-ecological systems research,\" argues that a process-relational perspective, \"which focuses on nonequilibrium dynamics and relations between\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8426,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/06\/wark-on-moores-capitalocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":1374,"position":2},"title":"Wark on Moore’s Capitalocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"McKenzie Wark gets at some very\u00a0important issues in what we might call \"the ontology of the Anthropocene\" in this review of Jason Moore's book Capitalism in the Web of Life. Moore's work, as he acknowledges (and as I have argued here before), provides\u00a0an important contribution to rethinking the relations between\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moore_-_Capitalism_in_the_Web_of_Life-max_221-28ccec2d6dcf167acd4733a0a8a74581","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/11\/Moore_-_Capitalism_in_the_Web_of_Life-max_221-28ccec2d6dcf167acd4733a0a8a74581-182x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5929,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/12\/14\/on-the-subjects-of-experience\/","url_meta":{"origin":1374,"position":3},"title":"On the subject(s) of experience","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This continues the consideration of subjectivity begun in the last post (on Zizek and Buddhism). It also continues the series on process-relational ecosophy-G, or pre-G. \u00a0 \u00a0 Who or what is a subject of experience, and what does it matter? A. N. Whitehead's panexperientialist metaphysics, and many of those philosophies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/09\/carlsbad_2100_600x450-275x206.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/05\/process-relational-theory-primer\/","url_meta":{"origin":1374,"position":4},"title":"Process-relational theory primer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the tasks of this blog, since its inception in late 2008, has been to articulate a theoretical-philosophical perspective that I have come to call \u201cprocess-relational.\u201d This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1543,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/12\/being-knowing-knowing-being\/","url_meta":{"origin":1374,"position":5},"title":"Being knowing, knowing being","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The debate between relational and objectological variants of speculative realism (for lack of a better characterization) has taken another of its more frenetic turns, which is both frustrating and promising -- frustrating because it tends to descend into personally directed pejoratives when it does that, and because, as Steve Shaviro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}