Machines Operate

They whir, they buzz, they spin, and rumble. A world is a fabric of machines. Machines are not exhausted by rigid machines, and neither design nor purpose and use are essential features of machines. Quartz crystals, recipes, novels, and South-East Asian tanukis are no less machines than coffee-makers and bulldozers. What, then, is a machine? We have seen that one shortcoming of the term “object” is that it leads us to think of a subject that posits or observes that object. We think of an object as that which is opposed to a subject, and therefore think of objects as necessarily attached to a subject that experiences them. These associations are avoided with the concept of machines. We can easily imagine a machine operating in the world without anyone there to experience it. The concept of machine thus helps us to escape a highly sedimented philosophical tradition surrounding objects and subjects.

However, another drawback of the concept of objects is that it encourages us to think in terms of subjects and predicates. We think of an object as a subject of predication or as a subject that possesses a set of qualities or properties that make it the subject that it is. Regarded as an object, that tree over there is a subject of predication, possessing qualities like the color of its bark and leaves, its shape, the configuration of its branches, its texture, its smell, and so on. Asked what the tree is, we list these properties or qualities. It is these properties or qualities that make the tree this subject. Yet we notice that some of these qualities change, but the tree still remains that tree or subject. In the fall, for example, the leaves change color and fall off the tree. How can the tree simultaneously be that tree and change?