Abstract

Objects – even tomatoes – are, in a sense, timeless – they exist, all at once, whole and integrated. Indeed, it is just this fact about objects – their timelessness – that makes it puzzling how we can experience them as we do. In the language of traditional philosophy, objects are transcendent; they outstrip our experience; they have hidden parts, always. When you perceive an object, you never take it in from all sides at once. And yet you have a sense of the presence of the object as a whole at a moment in time.