Pale amethyst cover with geode-like concentric rings and a faint P8, titled What Is a Discovery: the naming is discovery, the mark is invention.

What Is a Discovery

“Who discovered it?” is usually heard as a question about where a thing started. Derived from the foundation’s eighth primitive, the verb already carries the answer — a discoverer is, by the word’s own grammar, not the origin of what was found — and “discovered or invented?” splits cleanly: the naming is discovery, the mark is invention. … readWhat Is a Discovery

Dark aubergine cover reading What Is a Language, with the line: a language does not build your world and does not merely wrap it; it is a stock of names for conditions that were there either way. A faint numeral 8.7 sits at the lower right.

What Is a Language

A language is pictured either as a neutral container you pour thoughts into, or as the thing that cuts the world into the pieces you are then stuck with. Both pictures assume the only two relations on offer are causing and doing nothing. The foundation I work from has a third one, and the ordinary business of learning a word is where it can be watched operating. … readWhat Is a Language

Cover for What Is a Category: an index-card ground with the title in ink and green italic, and a faint circle with one marked point at the lower right.

What Is a Category

A category is supposed to be a container: things are in it or out, and the argument is about the things. The foundation says a category is a point on a circle, and a point has no inside. Nothing is in a category; membership is a mark a reader made about how far a thing stood from a named condition, and the thing did not move — which is why Pluto could leave the planets unchanged, why one tomato can be a fruit and a vegetable in a single ruling, and why no list of what a chair is closes. … readWhat Is a Category