Objects And Processes

The points here don't refer to objects and processes as usual subject matter in programming theory. Rather, objects and processes are viewed as the typical expressions taken by matter and energy as observed and measured by people in the real world. So the level of discussion here would be on a quite higher plane than in computer science, although people familiar with computers and programming would probably see some parallels and analogies.

Matter is of course the most generic concept that captures the bulk of how the universe could be observed, described, measured, and analyzed. Matter could exist in various modes and myriad forms, ranging from the subparticle soup right after the big-bang singularity, to chemical elements and basic compounds, all the way to organic chemicals and DNA and cells and tissue and copper and silicon that comprise sentient beings trying to comprehend and explore the universe with their tools. The notion of an object implies a sense of structure and granularity in matter's general existence.

An object, in this philosophical sense, is matter that takes a specific set of internal attributes, function (or interaction with its surroundings), form, and location in a defined frame of space and time. In this sense, too, an object exists as a self-contained whole--like an egg so to speak--and at the same time interacts with its specific environment including other objects--like other eggs in a nest and the hen setting to incubate them, so to speak. Hence, when we speak of an object, we can define its internal basis of existence and its external conditions of existence.

Next: How does an object define its trajectory of change in the form of a process, or a closely-related set of processes.

Author: JunVerzola

I am not sure quite where you are going with this. Take the example of a large piece of rock. This is the end of a process where it has been transformed chemically over a long period of time. At the same time it can be eroded naturally or quarried and carved to represent something e.g. become part of a building. In some cases carved stones are reused later for a different purpose. To take a specific example, the RosettaStone is both a piece of stone, something reused and has become an icon for translation because of its history and what is written on it. -- JohnFletcher

I'm not very sure either. Writing these pieces is a self-clarificatory journey for me, sort of like picking up pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in my mind and starting to find that some of the pieces fit together, but not yet in a complete way.

A large piece of rock, after it is separated from the mother rock that formed geologically through millennia, does indeed present the start of new processes, but involving different external forces (natural weathering, human activity, etc) that run at a different scale of time compared to the rock's original formation. So you could say that while the nature of the rock as generic object stays the same, it is passively transformed into a myriad other objects -- breaks down into boulders and pebbles, chipped into building blocks, the RosettaStone, or Michelangelo's David.

Still, the rock's internal basis of existence (internal attributes) asserts itself. For example, given the same external conditions, sandstone or chalk weathers much faster and breaks up into a different kind of rock debris than granite.

More importantly, if we keep to the larger scale of geological time (millennia), the special moment of existence of a rock as part of a building, a marker with inscriptions, a statue, and so on and so forth, is just an instant of time and soon flows back to the more fundamental processes of geological formation, that is, it breaks up, wears down, turns into dust or silt or ocean bed, in great cycles.

This topic on objects and processes is perhaps better understood side by side with another topic, on GeneralAndParticular. -- JunVerzola

Interesting. Maybe this distinction of objects and processes can help:

Data is classified by data types (a.k.a. positive types). Data is defined by how it is constructed, and the way you use data is by pattern-matching against it.
Computation is classified by computation types (a.k.a. negative types). Computations are defined their eliminations - that is, by how they respond to signals/messages/pokes/arguments.

This was just recently posted here:

LambdaTheUltimate thread:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4471

Original Article:

http://requestforlogic.blogspot.de/2012/03/what-does-focusing-tell-us-about.html

A followup to JohnFletcher 's comment about a piece of rock in general and the RosettaStone in particular:

An object is, to repeat and reiterate what I already wrote above, one that transcends its generic concept and "takes a specific set of internal attributes, function (or interaction with its surroundings), form, and location in a defined frame of space and time." In other words, when we refer to "a piece of rock" as a particular object, it is one that exists in a particular place and time, with more or less definite boundaries that demarcate what is internal and what is external to it.

In that sense, a property of an object (e.g., the qualities of a material--say, its particular mineral structure and composition--that help us categorize it as a rock, i.e., its rockiness as a property) may be abstracted from the object itself, in the sense that the particular piece of rock shares this particular property with an immense set of other similar rocks. Now when a worker chips a smaller tablet-sized piece from a huge rock quarry, it separates a new child object from the mother object but retains much of its original properties. But one process ends and a new one begins. When that tablet-sized piece is given a final shape, polished, and words engraved into it, as the RosettaStone was presumably made, it turns into still another object, with many old properties retained and new ones acquired.

Maybe the point that emerges from this conversation is that an object is defined by the continuity of its properties. When its set of properties start to change--some old ones lost, some new ones gained--then the object can also be said to undergo a process of changing into another object. A crucial question is therefore, where do we draw the line? Can we know (and agree on) that certain point when the object has changed sufficiently in quality to become a new object? It is a matter of QuantityAndQuality as well as a sense of CriticalMass.