This started as a pragmatist search of the term “Objectile”. I was curious about the real meaning of it, while the famous 1995 works of Bernard Cache were the thing I was looking for as images. I found two things about this word. One of them is the reproductions and online marketing of those famous carved panels (I was searching for), and while the second thing was a very interesting philosophical text from Levi Bryant, this blog (then became much more important to me). It was quite enlightening for me to see very nice explanations of contemporary architectural domains, mostly the hardest ones for me to understand. I wanted to share that text with you:

Objectile or Ob-ject-ile – A sort of portmanteau word combining “projectile” and “object”, evoking the sense of ob-jects as events or verbs, unfoldings (ex-plications) of what is in-folded (im-plications), standing-forth from a ground against which the event makes or announces a difference. Thought of as both A) assemblages and b) multiplicities.

Field – All ob-ject-iles are attached to a field, a field of relations, a field of forces, through and in which properties of the ob-ject-ile are evoked or ex-plicated and upon which the ob-ject-ile acts in turn. A field can also be referred to as conditions or a world. While all ob-ject-iles are attached to a field, ob-ject-iles are not identical to their field. Moreover, asymmetries, inequalities, or disequilibriums within fields or conditions are only one way in which ob-ject-iles are evoked or ex-plicated. Ob-ject-iles themselves contain asymmetries or disequilibriums through which they can be ex-plicated.

Assemblage– A synonym for “ob-ject-ile”. There is no ob-ject-ile that is not a unified composite of other ob-ject-iles. Put otherwise, there are no Lucretian atoms, but rather the ontic domain is composed of assemblages all the way down.

Split-Object– Kant proposed that objects are split between their being as phenomena (for-us) and their being as noumena (for-itself). This, however, was an epistemicdistinction pertaining to our access to objects. Within Onticology, “split-objects” refers not an epistemic split in our access to objects, but rather an ontological split in ob-ject-iles themselves. Insofar as all ob-ject-iles are assemblages, they are constitutively split between their being as a unity or an identity and the other ob-jectiles of which they are composed. These other ob-ject-iles are entities in their own rights and function as both necessary conditions for the assemblage but are also often in tension or struggle with the assemblage to which they belong.

Enlistment– In order for an ob-ject-ile to form it must be assembled from other ob-ject-iles. The process by which assemblages are assembled is referred to as enlistment. Those ob-ject-iles enlisted in an assemblage serve a necessary role in the ongoing “autopoiesis” or self-production of an ob-ject-ile or assemblage. For example, a political party must both enlist members in order to form an assemblage but these members also produce the assemblage.

Inequality– Any intensive difference that produces a state-change in an ob-ject-ile or assemblage. For example, pressure, temperature, speed, etc. All ob-ject-iles require a reservoir of inequalities to differentiate themselves or stand-forth from their field.

Singularity– Points of friction, density, tension, condensation, or resistance in relations between an enlister and an enlistee. In the case of a political party, for example, singularities would be the idiosyncracies of personal history, personal desires, and biology belonging to members in contrast to the official dogma of the party. Singularities, coupled with inequalities, are the true transcendental conditions of assemblages, presiding over the genesis of an ob-ject-ile’s form.

Aggregate– Relations between assemblages or ob-ject-iles that do not themselves form an assemblage or ob-ject-ile.

Principles

Ontic Principle – There is no difference that does not make a difference. This is to be understood in three ways: 1) Ob-ject-iles are compositions of difference (here “composition” should be understood as both having musical connotations and connotations of “material composition”), 2) Ob-ject-iles differ in themselves insofar as they are constantly changing through their adventure in time and “autopoiesis” or enlistment of other ob-ject-iles to produce themselves, and 3) ob-ject-iles makedifferences on other entities. Minimally, “to be” signifies to make a difference.

Ontological Principle– Being is said in a single and same sense for all that is. If, minimally, “to be” signifies “to make a difference”, it follows that anything that makes a difference is or ex-ists. This does not foreclose the question of how it ex-ists or makes a difference insofar as difference entails that there are different ways of ex-isting.

Principle of Reality – The degree of power or reality embodied in a being is a function of the extensiveness of the differences that entity produces. The Principle of Reality pertains to relationships among or between assemblages, measuring the extensiveness of one assemblages impact or differences on other assemblages. Power is a ratio of intensity, ranging from absolute zero or no difference on any other assemblage to infinity or differences made on all other entities. Zero and infinity are ideal intensities that are not to be found in any world or field.

Latour’s Principle – There is no transportation without translation. Follows from the Ontic Principle. Insofar as there is no difference that does not make a difference, it follows that no assemblage or ob-ject-ile can transport or convey its difference to another assemblage or ob-jectile without a process of translation or weaving of differences in which singularities must contend with one another in the production of a state-change in one or both of the assemblages involved.

Principle of Irreduction– Nothing is either reducible or irreducible to anything else. From Latour’s Irreductions, follows from Latour’s Principle. The Principle of Irreduction is a principle of labor, cost, or work, signifying that the transportation or conveyance of any difference, the making of any difference, involves labor cost where the singularities of the assemblage making the difference must engage the singularities of another assemblage to impose its difference on the second assemblage. This principle could also be called Lacan’s Principle, where it is asserted that there is no relation without a remainder.

Principle of Act-uality– All ob-ject-iles are act-ual or acts. Insofar as difference is made, it follows that ob-ject-iles are acts, verbs, processes, activities, or doings. Follows from the Ontic Principle.

Whitehead’s Principle– All ob-ject-iles arise from and are explained in terms of other ob-ject-iles. Whitehead refers to this principle as the “Ontological Principle”. Differences arise from differences and are to be explained in terms of other differences. Follows from the Ontic Principle.

Principle of Change– There is no relation that does not produce a change. Follows from Latour’s Principle and the Principle of Irreduction.

Principle of Infinite Decomposition– There is no ultimate difference or foundational difference. Insofar as to be is to differ, it follows that there cannot be an ultimate being out of which all other beings are composed.

Fallacies

Epistemic Fallacy– The position that questions of ontology can be reduced to questions of epistemology. From Roy Bhaskar’s Realist Theory of Science.

Hegemonic Fallacy– The reduction of difference to one difference that makes all the difference or one difference that makes the most important difference. This fallacy arises from failing to observe Latour’s Principle and the Principle of Irreduction, thereby ignoring the singularities of the assemblage to which differences from another assemblage are being transported.

At last, I found a very clear connection between contemporary design computing and its philosophical-metaphysical roots firsthand. This is important for designers to construct such connections themselves, without any architectural theorists in between as a translator, or prophet.