420. Types of objects
As discussed earlier, I define an object as having components that cohere more or less, in some ‘assemblage’, as DeLanda calls it, for some duration, and have a potential to manifest themselves outside, generate response, new properties, in interaction with other objects. That potential is limited by the object’s components and their properties, as well as by the potential of outside objects, and principles of logic, design, natural laws, legal laws and other institutions. 

Objects are often nested, with components being objects in their own right, and the object being a component of a larger object.

Here I consider different types of objects.

One distinction is that between material objects, such as bridges and molecules, objects that are largely immaterial but have some basis in matter or energy, such as organizations, institutions, and thoughts, and objects that are entirely immaterial such as characters in a novel, and notions of heaven and hell. The types of components and their coherence vary widely.

-          For a bridge: the assemblage of parts, depending on properties of materials and principles of construction and design.

-          For an organism: the assemblage of organs, made from cells constructed from amino-acids, guided and conditioned by genes, depending on the presence of foods, temperature, etc. Continuity of the organism is conditional upon homeostasis, keeping variables of metabolism within limits, such as temperature, nutrition, oxygen, waste disposal, …

-          For a species: the gene pool, generating life forms in interaction with the selection environment. Its potential is limited by reproductive isolation. Horses can mate with donkeys, but the offspring is infertile.

-          For a molecule: the composing atoms, with bonds between them from sharing electrons from the shells of waves orbiting their nuclei, depending on the composition of those nuclei of protons and neutrons, depending on external conditions such as temperature, pressure, …...

-          For thought: patterns of neuronal connectivity in the brain on the basis of adapting thresholds of firing, in electro-chemical processes.

-          For a firm: a constellation of people, machinery, and processes of design, production, sales, purchasing, and collaboration inside and outside the firm. In the following item in this blog I will consider what its potential and essence may be.

-          For a language: words and connecting devices of grammar, syntax, rhyme, metre, depending on the context of discourse.

-          For communities and institutions, such as markets, industries, economies, legal systems, parliament, etc.: a structure consisting of different levels of professions, materials, physical connections, communication channels, laws and regulations, cultural and social norms and habits, etc., and networks of interaction of people and organizations.

-          In the following item in this blob I will discuss scientific fields.

-          For a novel: its plot, and characters in it, with their positions and roles. Much is left unspecified, left to the imagination of the reader.

-          For heaven and hell: religious doctrine, symbols, rituals, etc.    

The connections between components need to have some persistence in time, across contexts, but need not be continuous in the sense of being uninterrupted. In building construction, actualisation of a given design is project based, actualized intermittently. 

For a number of objects I have used the notion of a script, as a model of an object’s identity.  A script is a network of nodes connected by directed ties (also called ‘edges’) that may represent temporal sequence, logical implication, causation, collection, sharing of resources, communication, … Thus, a script may represent a theory, argument, story, production process, bridge, molecule, …Nodes harbour a repertoire of subscripts from which a selection can be made according to conditions, and the script is itself a component of a wider superscript.

The script models the potential, the capacity of an object, which constitutes its identity.

The classic example is a restaurant, with a sequence of nodes for entering, seating, ordering, eating, paying and leaving. Each of those can be done in a variety of ways, in alternative subscripts in the node. Thus, one can pay cash, by card, or cheque. The restaurant is a node in a superscript of location, roads of access, parking, and a supply chain.  

An object can change in a minor way, locally, in nodes, with new subscripts and the shedding of old ones, while preserving the ordering of the nodes. For example, for payment cheques are no longer in use, and there is a new way of payment by smart phone. That applies to restaurants as well as shops, hotels, etc.  

A larger change of the object is that of the order of nodes, and an even larger one that of new structures with old and new nodes adopted in interaction with outside objects. The latter, frame breaking change I would see as a breakdown of identity and the emergence of a new object.

For example, the shift from a service to a self-service restaurant involved a change of the order of nodes, to arrival, food selection, paying, eating and leaving. However, this does not leave the nodes unaffected. For example, selection now entails carrying a tray with selected foods. So, a self-service restaurant is not the same type of object as the service restaurant.

The principle of self-service has been adopted by other kinds of objects, such as stores and hotels.

The script is one way of representing an assemblage. I don’t know how far its validity or  usefulness reaches, but I found it enlightening in studies of innovation.[i]

In the following item I will consider in more detail some immaterial objects, such as science and firms.         

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[i] Bart Nooteboom, 2000, learning and innovation in organizations and economies, Oxford University Press.