---
title: "Historical Things"
description: "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…"
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/historical-things"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/historical-things"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Historical Things

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/historical-things), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

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.

## Appears in

- [Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/babynoosphere) (2025-05-10)
- [The History of Now](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/historyofnow) (2025-05-10)
- [Recursive Worlds](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/recursiveworlds) (2025-05-10)
- [Don’t Denigrate The Dinosaurs](https://antikythera.wiki/work/media/noema-dont-denigrate-the-dinosaurs) (2023-08-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._