They think an octopus in a tank is an octopus. In too narrow a scope (that falsely pretends to universality) they are correct. But an octopus -is the ocean-. Take it from its environment and you flatten its identity irreconcilably. We pretend that the identity of the -object- remains stable regardless of context. This is important in some narrow contexts, but is arguably not really the case, except in a rather formal sense (a sense, I might add, largely or completely uninhabitable for living beings).

How does a scientific, literal, or objectivist perspective come to terms with something like that? It is outside the structural range of such options. Living beings and environments call one another into being. They emerge together and both form a kind of memory aspect of the other as well as transitional catalysts…