Historical Things

Moynihan's distinction, stated in the opening of Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: "Unlike things that can effortlessly spawn anywhere or anywhen, regardless of previous chains of events, the products of life are necessarily products of histories." Some things (hydrogen) can begin to exist anywhere, anytime; historical things require a specific, non-repeatable chain of prior events, and the more complex the thing the more history its assembly needs — the oxygen we breathe is "the product of time, of many cumulative prior steps." Histories "open leeway for contingence": past events could have gone otherwise, so the future can too, and studying them is the precondition of planetary foresight. The Noema dinosaurs essay develops the same idea at length (Darwin made species historical; belief in spontaneous generation made extinction costless). Informal cousin of assembly theory's assembly index.