Do you ever wonder why we call one thing one thing and another thing something else? Well,here’s a thing…Having been away from these pages for a few weeks, I thought that when I came back I really ought to address a properly great question. So here we move: what are things?You know, and things? Pens and tomatoes and motorcycles and daffodils. And I don’t just mean objects: also chess and Valentine’s Day and ants and poetry and Somalia. They’re all things. The Observer is a thing,but so is this specific issue of the Observer. But also, the individual copy of this specific issue of the Observer that you might be currently holding is a thing – and a different thing from the institution of the newspaper itself, or the concept of a day’s individual edition,but somehow linked. But then you might be reading this on a phone (a thing) or computer (a thing), either way via the medium (a thing? A person? A lady with a turban?) of the Guardian website (which is also a thing).
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Source: theguardian.com