I hit an interesting word the other day: “rheomode.” In language, the rheomode (unlike other modes) puts the focus on verbs. It says, reality is a process, not so much a state.
It is necessary to begin with the event as a basic concept, and later to arrive at the object as a continuing structure of related and ordered events.
Rheomode comes from a physicist-philosopher, back in 1963.
David Bohm argued that our language was far too object oriented, or noun based, and argued that this was making us see a world of static objects instead of dynamic processes.
Phenomena at all scales are not entities but relatively stable processes.
He proposed we turn our language around:
Might it be possible for “the syntax and grammatical form of language to be changed so as to give a basic role to the verb rather than the noun?”
It reminds me of functional programming, which elevates the verb to a first-class state along with nouns.
It reminds me even more of event sourcing. Of “the present is a left fold of history” – meaning that if we start with emptiness, then respond one-by-one to each event from the past, we arrive at the current state. Like GetEventStore, like Datomic. This contrasts with place-based databases, where updates wipe out prior information. Life, and business operations, are path-dependent: where we go from here depends not only on where we are now, but how we got here, and how everything around us is moving.
Perhaps this paradigm, this event-focused viewpoint, should be called rheomodic programming.