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Comment by andai

3 hours ago

Excerpt:

a. Holes are ontologically parasitic: they are always in something and cannot exist in isolation. (‘There is no such thing as a hole by itself’, Tucholsky 1931: 100; ‘Take away the thing, and the hole goes too’, Heath 1967: 524). This is why there cannot exist a world consisting only of holes (Coggins 2010: 71).

b. Holes are fillable. You don’t necessarily destroy a hole by filling it up (except perhaps when the filling is homogeneous with the hole-lining); you don’t create a new hole by removing the filling.

c. Holes are locationally gracious. When you fill or put something in a hole, the hole does not squeeze to the side; it shares its location with its guest (and if the guest has a hole, you get two co-located entities of the same kind).

How about engineering usage when removing material from, e.g., a beam, can help achieve overall weight/flexibility goals?