Recovering the etymology of ‘concrete’

with regard to Austere (Blobject) Monism

by Bodhangkur

1. the current meanings (philosophical and everyday);

2. the relation between those meanings and the vagueness of “concrete” in austere monism.

1. Etymology of “concrete”

The English concrete derives from the Latin concrētus, the past participle of concrescere — “to grow together, coalesce, condense.”

Root	Meaning	Derivatives
con-	together, with	connection, conjunction
crescere	to grow, arise, increase	crescent, create, accretion

Originally, concrētus described the outcome of things that have grown or thickened together (i.e. conditionally compounded, in the Buddhist sense) — a solid aggregate (of discrete bits) formed by union or condensation.
In post-classical Latin and early French (concret), it came to mean condensed, material, palpable, opposed to the abstract or ideal.

Thus the deep sense of concrete is:

that which has coalesced into a tangible unity by aggregation or growth.

2. Meanings of “concrete” in current usage

(a) Everyday / Physical

1. Substance-like: tangible, solid, material (e.g. “concrete evidence,” “a concrete wall”).

2. Opposed to abstract: actual or particular rather than general or conceptual.

Examples:

· “A concrete example” = a specific instance that embodies an idea.

· “Concrete reality” = the physically given, perceptible world.

(b) Philosophical / Analytic

In analytic metaphysics, concrete is used in opposition to abstract, defined by spatio-temporal location and causal efficacy:

Term	Definition (standard)	Examples
Concrete entity	Exists in space and time, can cause or be affected	Chairs, electrons, galaxies
Abstract entity	Not in space-time, causally inert	Numbers, properties, propositions

Hence, concrete implies particularity, locality, interaction, and growth out of relational multiplicity — precisely what its Latin root “grown-together” encodes.

3. Relation to Austere (Blobject) Monism

Austere monism claims:

There exists one concrete particular — the total world, the “blobject.”

But this use violates both etymology and current meaning:

(a) Etymological contradiction

· Concrētus means “grown together,” implying previous plurality or elements of growth.

· The blobject, denying parts or multiplicity, cannot “grow together” because there is nothing from which to coalesce.

· Hence, by etymology, the blobject cannot be concrete: it is non-concrescent, never-grown-together.

The blobject’s “oneness” is not a unity of composition but a primitive totality, which the word concrete historically excludes.

In short:

“Concrete” implies synthesis; the blobject allows none.

(b) Philosophical misuse

According to the analytic criterion, a thing is concrete if it:

1. Exists in space and time,

2. Has parts or regions, and

3. Can engage in causal interactions.

Yet if the blobject is the totality of all space-time, it is not in space-time but is space-time;
it has no external relata for causal contrast, and no internal divisions without reintroducing plurality.

Thus, in claiming that the blobject is “concrete,” Horgan and Potrč employ a category term stripped of its defining contrasts.
They assert concreteness without any possible operational or logical criterion for it.

(c) Semantic residue: a name without reference

Because “concrete” is used as a primitive, its meaning in austere monism is residual rather than referential.
It functions rhetorically — to assure the reader that the blobject is not a mere idea — but does not specify how it is real.

This rhetorical concreteness is indexical, not definitional:

· It points toward the felt world (“this, here, actual”)

· But offers no distinguishing property of the entity called “blobject.”

Hence, “concrete” becomes a vague honorific: a word whose function is to preserve ontological gravitas while concealing the absence of referential precision.

(d) Procedural reinterpretation

From Finn’s procedural standpoint, concrete retains its etymological sense of “grown-together” but is now redefined dynamically:

A thing is concrete when its parts — quanta, processes, or data — have come together into a stable, coherent, contact-producing iteration of the Universal Procedure.

In this sense:

· The slime mould is concrete: many molecular reactions cohering into a living blob.

· A photon is concrete: a quantised contact between fields.

· The blobject, having no outside, cannot be concrete; it is the precondition of concreteness — the rule-set or total potential, not a formed being.

4. Conclusion

Etymologically, concrete means grown-together;
philosophically, it means locally interactive and causally real;
practically, it means tangible, specific, contactable.

Austere (blobject) monism empties all three senses:

· There is no togetherness, because no parts;

· No locality, because no boundaries;

· No contact, because nothing external exists.

Thus its “one concrete particular” is a verbal illusion — an abstract total described with the vocabulary of the physical.

In effect, Horgan and Potrč’s “concrete blobject” is abstractum masked as concretum:
a conceptual whole masquerading as the material unity it cannot define.

Or, as Finn would quip in a druid’s minim:

“To call the partless whole concrete is to call a cloud a stone —
for fear the wind might blow it away.”

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