The Galaxy Has No Name: Zen and Object-Oriented Ontology on the Limits of Language
Brainy nonsense I thought about this weekend during my walk
Look up at the night sky and point to the Milky Way.
What exactly are you pointing at? A collection of roughly 100–200 billion stars? The gravitational interplay of dark matter? The slow-motion collision course with Andromeda? The childhood memory of lying on summer grass, neck craned skyward?
We call it "the Milky Way" as if a name could capture this vast, dynamic system—but the galaxy itself remains stubbornly indifferent to our labels. It continues its ancient rotation, birthing and consuming stars, stretching across 100,000 light-years of space, utterly unconcerned with human linguistics. This gap between names and things has preoccupied philosophers for millennia, but two unlikely companions offer striking insights: the ancient wisdom of Zen Buddhism and the contemporary movement of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). Though their conclusions diverge, both challenge the materialist assumption that reality can be fully captured, categorized, and controlled through language and scientific description.
The Zen of No-Thing
In Zen, naming creates the illusion of separation—between observer and observed, between one object and another, between the galaxy "out there" and the consciousness "in here" that contemplates it. Zen practice seeks to dissolve this perceived apartness.The Heart Sutra declares: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." The galaxy isn't empty because it lacks substance, but because it lacks the fixed, independent existence our names imply. It arises through countless causes and conditions—stellar nucleosynthesis, gravitational collapse, cosmic expansion, the observer with their telescopes and concepts. Where does "galaxy" end and "not-galaxy" begin?Like naming a swirl in a tide pool, our labels freeze dynamic processes into static things. The swirl is nothing apart from the water, the rocks, the moon’s pull, the Earth’s spin. Pull any thread, and the fabric of interdependence unravels. The galaxy is empty of separate selfhood—not because it doesn’t exist, but because it exists only in relationship.When we see this interdependence, the need to name and categorize softens. Direct experience becomes possible. The galaxy simply is, beyond the grasp of conceptual elaboration.
OOO’s Radical Withdrawal
Object-Oriented Ontology takes a contrasting path. Rather than dissolving boundaries, OOO radicalizes them.
Philosophers like Graham Harman and Timothy Morton argue that objects—like the galaxy—possess a core reality that withdraws from all access. No amount of scientific measurement, poetic description, or contemplative practice can exhaust what the galaxy truly is.
From an OOO perspective, the galaxy harbors an essence that eludes our grasp. We can measure its redshift, map its spiral arms, estimate its mass, but something fundamental always escapes. A telescope’s data reveals patterns of light and gravity, yet the galaxy’s deeper reality remains untouched, not as a limit of technology but as a feature of its existence. This withdrawal isn’t unique to human observation—objects withhold themselves from all relations.
When galaxies collide, they interact through their observable qualities but never fully merge, each retaining their own hidden depths. Morton’s concept of "hyperobjects"—entities like climate change or the Milky Way, vast in time and space—amplifies this idea. You can measure rising CO2 levels or feel a heatwave, but you cannot point to climate change itself.
The galaxy, too, is a hyperobject: its stars and gas clouds are tangible, yet its totality defies containment, present everywhere and nowhere.
Two Roads Beyond Materialism
Zen’s interdependence and OOO’s withdrawal seem at odds. Zen dissolves the notion of separate objects; OOO insists on their radical autonomy. Yet both reject the reductionist materialism that dominates Western thought.
Standard materialism treats objects as fully transparent to analysis—mere collections of atoms obeying predictable laws. This view fuels an extractive relationship with the world, turning forests into "timber resources" or galaxies into data points for human mastery. Both Zen and OOO preserve something irreducible about reality.
In Zen, it’s the Buddha-nature—the luminous potential shared by rocks, trees, galaxies, and consciousness.
In OOO, it’s the autonomous dignity of objects, a metaphorical reverence for their hidden depths, not a spiritual essence but an acknowledgment of their independence from human agendas.Neither tradition lets us reduce the galaxy to our concepts. Whether through emptiness or withdrawal, it retains its capacity to surprise, to exceed our frameworks.
The Limits of Language
What does this mean for naming and language? Both Zen and OOO call for philosophical humility, recognizing that words fall short of reality’s depth. Zen’s "skillful means" uses names as tools, like fingers pointing at the moon—not the moon itself. We can speak of spiral arms or dark matter while remembering these are provisional gestures, not the galaxy’s truth.
The danger lies in mistaking the map for the territory, relating to our labels rather than the reality they approximate.
OOO, too, urges humility. Its speculative realism affirms the galaxy’s existence while accepting its partial inaccessibility. We can refine our models—calculate its mass, trace its rotation—but the galaxy’s core remains elusive, not as a temporary gap in knowledge but as an intrinsic feature of its being.
Living with Mystery
The deepest wisdom of Zen and OOO is learning to dwell in mystery. In an age of information overload and technological hubris, both remind us that reality is stranger, more elusive, than our names suggest.The galaxy spins on, indifferent to our categories. It needs no names, nor is it diminished by their inadequacy. Whether seen as empty of inherent existence or withdrawn from full access, it remains itself—present yet distant, familiar yet alien.Next time you gaze at the night sky, hold both perspectives. Feel the web of causation—stars, gravity, your own fleeting perception—that makes this moment possible. Sense, too, the galaxy’s otherness, its refusal to be captured by data or imagination. Let it be both empty and withdrawn, intimately connected and radically apart.The swirl in the tide pool has no name because it needs none. It dances with water, rock, moon, and earth. Our names are beautiful gestures toward the mystery, but the mystery endures, whether dissolved in emptiness or veiled in withdrawal.
The galaxy, in its nameless splendor, spirals through the dark.