Interconnected Spaces
I am aware I have still not given you a graspable concrete example of a hyper-object. Not to worry, the firm material will be there, at least in some parts. We will get there, just not yet. We must continue to explore space(s) first, because we must be able to imagine a place out there, beyond the wall, beyond the boundary, beyond the fabric, somewhere very close to the surface, or the bottom, or the top, depending on whatever way you want to try and observe it. We must do this before we begin looking for objects within these abstract spaces.
But why is thinking about such spaces worth our time? Can’t we just be content with those in our immediate realm of observation? I guess the short answer is: you could be content without knowing. Of course we could go about daily life and it not truly affect us. Maybe it is just a me thing, but knowing there could exist space(s) where very real objects exist, objects that affect those daily lives we are trying so hard to live, without actually having tried to think about what those spaces are, and what they mean to me, I think it is worth the contemplation. For however short a time. Without being able to envision another place beyond our immediate space, beyond our scope of objective observation, then we would never be able to imagine what that area could look like, the architecture, the landscape of existence, and that bugs me. What gets me even more is that, if we did not know these things we could not even begin to imagine the possible objects that may exist there because, as we know, objects assemble and exist in all types of space. But we need to “picture” that space first!
As we saw in Part 1 - Assembling Hyper-Objects, these weird objects contain so many relations to other objects that we consider them “hyper”. Contemporary time is no stranger to hype, we have it in abundance. Hype comes in all shapes and sizes, but is mainly used to denote, if you are saying it in a group of friends on a park bench sipping out of red cups, something cool. That something can equally become “over-hyped”, meaning it has pushed through the boundary of cool, or not pushed far enough. For some odd (probably memetic) reason, many people seem to think it is still cool, whilst another group takes the complete opposite stance (probably in-group vs out-group related). But I am not here to talk about the latest fashion trends, and whilst I have been here before talking about human social dynamics, it is not necessarily that that I am after right now either.
The prefix “hyper” means something has gone above or beyond normality, or is in excess or abundance compared to said normality. In the case of hyper-objects, then, we are not talking about a hyped-object of excess abundance, I am using this object-classification to talk about an object that has become hyper-connected, or has an excess, beyond normal levels of relatedness compared to other objects within its shared or overlapping space. And this is why we must dig into space(s) first, because we must ideate over what spaces these objects exist in to understand the nature of the objects themselves. Picturing those spaces will be helpful in this task.
Perhaps the abundance of relations to other objects is caused by a hyper-objects position in space. As we begin to build our understanding of the space(s) they may inhabit, maybe we will begin to see that they exist closer to the fundamental level of it all - containing more relations given their own relative position in space. One common use of the hyper prefix is indeed to refer to movement and existence in space beyond the three-dimensional1 but I am not advocating for a quantum Hall effect fourth-dimensional existence, at least not yet anyway. We know interconnection exists in our regular old everyday space of existence in three-dimensions because of quantum weirdness occurring in three-dimensions. Whilst we will get to the growth of another space that may tease at an extra-dimensional quality later in this series, for now let us return to what we know: a hyper-object is “hyper” because it contains innumerable relations with other objects, and we are thinking about whether this excess of inter-relation surpasses normality because of its existence in a certain space. Thus, in this definition, a hyper-object (at least philosophically) is highly interconnected.
Because of the strange spatial-temporal places hyper-objects occupy, observation of the highly related object also proves difficult, counterintuitive to the notion that because it is so related it must be observable everywhere, but more on this later. Now, all this is of course still a thought-experiment, but let us just assume the existence of an object back there, the thing from the Fabric Analogy below responsible for creating the observable “bump in the fabric”.
That bump, not the object behind the fabric causing the bump, would rightly and wrongly become classified as an object itself. In such a fabricated-universe, people may even begin to worship the “bump in the fabric” because it appears so important to them. So extra-ordinary, hard to pin-down, yet has observable and palpable qualities, the bump is objectified and becomes venerated; wars become fought over it and large buildings are thrown together in its name. Some observers, given modern natural sciences progression in the past few hundred years, may prescribe scientific importance to the bump - rightfully so, because it is what they can observe, measure, and quantify. Others may endeavour to ruminate and ponder the possible causes of the bump, outside of conventional observation, having to imagine - oftentimes to get things wrong so others can get things right - a space beyond the observable.
In our fabricated-reality, if we become emboldened to the point that we determine some mysterious, unobservable structure behind the bumps' presence, it would still not be logical to comprehend that it could be an otherwise inanimate object causing said bump. It would be harder still to comprehend that it is an inanimate object being powered by a completely independent system like, in our case, fingers controlled by a nervous system controlled by a consciousness, controlled by, well, life like us. And that is what we imagine because that is all we know in an auto-biographical sense. Hence the attribution of causal events to mysterious and sacred objects, which become venerated as Idols and Cults of Worship, and to mysterious and sacred people, who become venerated as Gods and Deities. Then new lenses of observation opened up. Microscopes, telescopes, Hadron Colliders. Many have answered the low-humming of the machine. We prostrate and supplicate instead to new Cults of Worship: Technology and Science and Advancement. And why not?! These cults let us see into previously unquantifiable and completely real spaces all around us, spaces and interconnections that make us us. From the sub-molecular, to the quantum, to the cosmic to the computational. Yet still more abstract structures of causes and effects exist within spaces outside our conventional observational lens.
What are these structures? How do they affect us? What is their substance?2 One way to conceptualise hyper-objects is to imagine them as part of this Aristotelian substance at the base of it all3, obscured behind multiple layers of abstraction. Slight smudges on each microscopic slide, with the object of observational effort at the base of them all, the blurriest image imaginable. These layers of obfuscation appear built into the very fabric of interconnected spaces, spaces that exist in our everyday reality. These places are, in principle, pockets of our reality. We just can’t see all of them, only able to peer just below the surface. The expansive depths are imperceptible. But dip your head in, see what you can observe for yourself. Go on, I dare you.
Imagining Global Space
I’ve been saying “spaces” a lot recently. What do I mean? Have I lost the plot? Not sure I ever had a plot in the first place, there are many ways to go about tackling this one. Pioneer scientists like Dr. Micheal Levin have, in the exploration of the “self”, demarcated spaces into a few different landscapes, covering the rolling hills of physiological, the deserts of transcriptional4, the oceans of morphogenetics5, the jungles of linguistics and the architectures of the three-dimensional. Space can also represent the many diverse biological ecosystems that contain every biological systems (in some cases extending to thermodynamic systems too) existing in the literal space between the lithosphere and the troposphere.67 Conceptual space, just like the conceptual hyper-object, extends itself into many of these areas. Both the physical space and something else. For instance, space crosses into the open pits of the artificial and digital Expanse - endless realms of fabricated-space that exists beyond our immediate comprehension or intuition - a network of spaces that span the globe, yet is not quite adjacent to the biological, more within, or running through it. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves. All that is for later. For now, we are only interested in the spaces contained within our biosphere.
Our biosphere is our Earth. Our globule of inhabitable space in space. Imagine it as the container of all life as we know it on this planet,8 all objects simple and complex. A container full of the causal structures and infinite event arcs that life and other objects undergo. But removing life from the occasion for a minute, we know objects exist outside of our biosphere, and we are beginning to suspect objects transcend both our current space-time and others, and by following this we are starting to build up not only an image of our global space but space(s) beyond what we intuitively like to map. But for now we must get a measure on our global space first. Consequently, let’s focus only on those spaces and objects within our biosphere and, in typical heuristic-fashion, let’s imagine the biosphere like a Snow Globe:
Refrain from shaking it for a minute. If we look around we can instantly see that these various spaces, both physical and non-physical (and perhaps some odd places in between) allow for different objects to be assembled within them over time. Biological life is one example of a complex object developed in a specific set of spaces inside this snow globe. Start with the geographical locations strewn across the surface. If you were to spin a globe and let your finger fall on whatever part of the world happenstance takes you, you would be pointing to a section of the biosphere. That section contains a biome, which contains complex objects like life. Imagining the scale of such a global container of all biological life we may demarcate the outer bounds as stretching from the lithosphere to the troposphere, including our hydrosphere (all waterways and bodies of water including the Earth’s oceans). In an extreme case, say if we took the biosphere to be a container of thermodynamic systems and not just “life”, we may extend this outer boundary as far down as 5100 km to the molten core of it all, before soaring 600 km back above our heads to that thin exospherical veil separating us from outer space.
Contained within this global space are all of the observational and operational spaces mentioned by Dr. Levin. It must be, because we have imagined it. Such an observation opens us up to another space - the cognisphere. It can be said that all cognispheres exist in the biosphere (or some extension of it if you are getting technical and imagining future astronauts on the Moon or bases on Mars), because as far as we know that is where they have developed. Furthermore, contained within this internal space between cognitive and biological spaces are complex non-physical objects like ideas, narratives, and cultural-memesis-powered memes.9 All of these complex objects interconnect in some way across space and time, being developed across the physical and cognitive space, and as far as we know all of this inter-connection is contained within the confines of our biosphere. We are starting to circle back to the Nested Circles of Part 2, but we will continue our loop a little longer.
Beneath the Snow Globe-esque image above, the dark area at the base represents downward, “inner” space, including all the objects within it (i.e. the lithosphere containing igneous rock & continental plates) and their underlying systems (i.e. objective assembly chains & Earth’s formalised geological cycles, thermodynamic systems and electro-maganetic processes). Essentially, all that sits beneath our feet, all across the world - the geosphere. This dark space also contains the depths of the hydrosphere - a space inclusive to fresh water but majoritarily-consisting of oceanic space and in this case living systems existing beyond normal observation, in some extreme circumstances all the way to 11 kilometres below the rippling surface.
“Outside” of the global space denotes outer space - quite literally out of our space. This leads to a path trodden flat by structuralists hell-bent on mapping the recesses of the In-Out Duality. I will leave you at the crossroads, to take a look for yourself if you so wish. Part of me wishes to warn not to stay too long here, but the other part sees value in lingering in uncertain places, just to see what pops up. But just before I leave you I must say one last thing regarding this Snow Globe: it is just a heuristic! Use it as you wish, or do not use it at all. Whilst the Earth does bulge at the equator, it is of course not a scale nor an accurate model of Earth, nor our demarcated biosphere, it is just a design coincidence and it should not be taken as such. That being said, I enjoy switching between hyper-realistic models to a more workable conceptualisation of spaces on occasion just to see how it might aid in tracking philosophical ideas whilst pattern-matching them to heuristic frameworks that we can place around certain reality-born spaces. As a tool to think about things, sometimes the simpler the better. Not forever, but forever useful. Or in this case, the more recognisable the heuristic the more we can pick it apart from every angle. And we will need all the angles we can get where we are going next.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
- T. S. Elliot
Ouroboros - Wikimedia Commons
Merriam Webster Dictionary [online]
Used in the Aristotelian sense: substance being the base of everything.
“If substance did not exist it would be impossible for things in any of the other categories to exist. There could be no instances of properties if there were no substances to possess them.” - Howard & Weir, 2024, "Substance", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“the process of genetic information flow from DNA to RNA” (Han & Xie, 2021)
“morphogenesis—the establishment and creation of 3-dimensional anatomy.” (Levin, 2012)
I could see an argument for the biospherical boundaries extending to the outer edge of the thermosphere whilst the ISS is still inhabited. I can also see an argument for the biosphere to be extended to anywhere Earth-made objects exist at this current time. This would include spaces within Mars and other locations in our solar system where we have sent objects made here on Earth.
For reference, that is about 60 km under our feet to a maximum of 12 km above our heads.
See Rosenberg, 2017 for a more standardised definition.