Processes Over Objects — Why Automation Is a Philosophy
I. The Greek Quarrel The ancient Greeks asked a question that looks simple until you try to answer it: What is real? Not what exists, but what counts as being—what has substance, what deserves our attention. Socrates, wandering the agora of Athens, said it was the process. Not the object—the statue, the law, the definition scrawled in wax. What mattered was the method: how do we think? How do we question? How do we arrive at what might be true? The Platonic dialogues, maddeningly circular to modern readers, are exhibits A. Socrates would corner someone, let them stumble through their confident assertions, and show them the gaps. The doing was the philosophy. The dialogue itself was the point. …