Most beings around us that we recognise as beings, that we have concepts and names for, have a degree of variability in their existence. For example, a piece of paper remains a piece of paper even though it is folded or something is written on it. A man remains a man even if he takes a step forward or turns his head. But the variability is relative to what the being is conceived as. The piece of paper doesn’t remain an unfolded piece of paper if it is folded, though it will remain one even if things are written on it. A man doesn’t remain a man looking straight ahead if his head is turned to the side. And so on. We can imagine a conception of something that it could not possible continue existing in, for example a man who is alive but holds his breath indefinitely, or a man with a very specific blood composition, and so on.
This variability can be understood as being a kind of space. It can act as a medium, it can be occupied and appropriated. Beings can interact with each other and exist in a form of symbosis when they make use each other’s available space. However, this space is not always free for use in any manner whatsoever. The body’s immune system will attempt to repel invaders if the blood’s composition becomes suspect or threatening. Countries will attempt to keep their waters free of nuclear submarines belonging to foreign powers. A spring will try to return to its natural length if compressed or stretched, unless it comes to rest in an equilibrium with the force that acts on it. Thus, some forms of space are actively defended. On the other hand, some kinds of space are basically undefended. If I write something on a piece of paper and store it in a safe place, I can basically expect the writing to remain there even in the distant future. If I rotate the hands of a clock that doesn’t have a battery, they will remain in the position I put them in.
This notion of space is completely dependent on how concepts and beings are identified in the world in the first place. Thus there is nothing universal about it. It is grounded in a conceptual basis. This should not diminish its usefulness, however, since collections of concepts constitute practically everything that we deal with. If we accept this notion, next we may proceed to ask some interesting questions, such as:
- Is there a link between this “generalised space” and other concepts that we may care strongly about, such as Nassim Taleb’s proposed “antifragility“, or culture, or life?
- For a given space, is there a maximal degree of occupancy? Can the space be exhausted?
- How is space best occupied and defended?
For another analogy, consider the collective biomass on earth to be an entity, and consider that we as human beings are a particular configuration of the space that it affords.
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