This project attempts to bring about an object-oriented position toward pixels of all kinds consistent with more than a decade of development of object-oriented philosophy and the more recent and varied object-oriented ontology (OOO). For decades, spectral pixels have retained an ostensibly privileged status in remote sensing science. More specifically, scientific materialism and two of object-oriented philosopher Graham Harman's seven “radical” approaches to objects have characterized digital remote sensing science since its advent. That is, by denying both the distinction between an object and its qualities and the difference between an object and its accidents, the spectral pixel is regarded as directly representative of remotely sensed objects. Spectral data is therefore reduced to the 'actual' or 'existing'. The non-spectral, on the other hand, is often relegated to the modeling domain of the ‘potential’ where uncertainty is thought to prevail. Furthermore, non-spectral data layers are still habitually referred to as 'ancillary' and often receive short shrift in the literature. This project is a mereological approach to topographically complex landscapes. By first classifying DEM derived land-surface parameters as ecologically relevant objects, those objects then become the component parts and ultimately, the qualities of unified chorological objects segmented with eCognition™. Not only are these objects irreducible to their component parts, they are capable of being directly experienced and empirically investigated. This project thereby introduces a realist ontology and inter-objectivity to remote sensing science that should enable any GIS to better confront the complex multi-scale problems of the next few decades of unprecedented change.

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2. “…let ‘ontology’ refer to a description of the basic structural features shared by all
objects, and let ‘metaphysics’ signify the discussion of the fundamental traits of
specific types of entities…Any type of object distinct from others, however hazy the
boundaries may be, can become the subject of metaphysics” (Harman, 2007).
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3. “When the phrase ‘flat ontology’ was used by Roy Bhaskar in the early 1970s in his
book on the realist theory of science, it was a polemical term. Namely, he used it to
refer to theories that flatten the world into its accessibility to human observers; it
was a dismissive phrase aimed at positivism, not a flattering description of realism.
The meaning of the phrase was reversed in 2006 by Bhaskar’s admirer Manuel
DeLanda. For DeLanda, ‘flat ontology’ simply means that all entities must be treated
alike. That is to say, it is an anti-reductionist term, such that armies, cities, and herds
of cattle might be just as real as steel girders and atoms of potassium. ‘Flat’ has now
reversed its meaning: rather than referring to a world without levels in which
everything inhabits the realm of human consciousness, it means instead a world in
which all levels are on the same playing field” (Harman, 2011a).
“…atoms have no more reality than grain markets or sports franchises” (Harman,
2008a).
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4. The “first occurrence of the phrase ‘object-oriented philosophy’” was the title of
Harman’s September 11, 1999 lecture at Brunel University in Uxbridge, England
(Harman, 2010a).
(Interestingly enough, the image segmentation software eCognition™ became
commercially available the following year.)
In 2002, Harman and Manuel DeLanda were the only “admitted realists” among the
“continentally inspired philosophers” (Harman, 2008a & 20010a).
“Despite the claims of empiricism, I have no direct contact with sensual qualities at
all. For precisely this is the meaning of Husserl’s great discovery: I never encounter
black as an isolated quality, but only as the black of ink or poison, a black infused with
the style of these objects. In this way sensual objects serve as the bridge between
their diverse sensual qualities” (Harman, 2011b).
“But this is precisely the model of perception that Husserl rightly rejects…One can
well imagine a science fiction tale in which the narrator’s visual experience
decomposes horrifically into autonomous dots, as in the pointillist paintings of
Georges Seurat. But neither I, nor the reader, nor David Hume himself ever
experienced such a nightmarish world. The very suggestion is anything but empirical:
it is based on a sensationalist ideology not ratified by the experience of any living
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5. creature” (Harman, 2008b).
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6. “Intentionality is not a special human property at all, but an ontological feature of
objects in general” (Harman, 2007).
“The only form of direct contact we know so far is between the real object that
experiences the world and the various sensual objects it encounters” (Harman,
2011b).
Interobjectivity: “Reason alone tells us…that it is not some special human curse to
possess flawed models of other things. Rather, even the most brute form of causal
interaction will not be able to grasp the things themselves...It is relationality per se,
not human psychology, that fails to translate reality adequately”
(http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/objects-and-reduction/).
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7. The diagram I drew while reading Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics
(2008) during the summer of 2011…shortly before Harman published his own in The
Quadruple Object (2011).
Sensual qualities and how they “serve two masters, like moons orbiting two planets
at the same time: one visible and the other invisible” is readily seen here (Harman,
2011b).
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8. Undermining: monism, virtual philosophies of the pre-individual, and process
philosophies (e.g., the current and prevalent notions of ecology and geomorphology)
Overmining: empiricism, correlationism, relationism, and idealism
“In this respect, materialism is the hereditary enemy of any object-oriented
philosophy” (Harman, 2011b).
“And finally, to attack the replacement of metaphysics by science is often mistaken
for an attack on science itself, and the indifference to science by the past century of
continental philosophy is too regrettable to deserve even a hint of endorsement”
(Harman, 2010b).
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9. David Hume “famously denies that an object exists as anything more than a bundle of
qualities habitually linked together by the mind” (Harman, 2008b).
“This is similar to Point 4 about accidents, but refers to the level of reality itself rather
than that of qualities experienced by the mind” (Harman, 2008b).
Taxonomic essentialism…reified generalities and how it differs from object-oriented
‘essence’.
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10. Thought experiment: Imagine the possibility, however unlikely, for a
geomorphometric landform or landform element to conform to an existing landform
or landform element that does not have even one pixel in the DEM from which it was
derived with an accurate elevation value.
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11. (And Timothy Morton’s ‘temporary autonomous zones’ (Morton, 2011)!)
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12. The TRMI as seen in El Malpais National Monument in western New Mexico while
conducting the accuracy assessment of a detailed vegetation map.
Ridge orientation and slope aspects: a piñon-juniper woodland occupies the xeric
slope of northwest aspect (left) and an open Ponderosa pine parkland occupies the
mesic NNE slope of the volcanic crater (right).
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13. The four component parts of the TRMI and the increase in the number of possible
landform objects in the geomorphometric TRMI.
Why the TRMI?
• Easily understood and implemented in the field
• An effective moisture index ranging from 0 (xeric) to 60 (mesic), or 0 to 58 in the
case of the geomorphometric TRMI presented here
• The geomorphometric TRMI is decomposable and inherently multiscaled
• Because it uses a simple overlay to integrate its component parts, the
geomorphometric TRMI does not propagate DEM errors
Why not the more fashionable TWI?
• The TWI propagates DEM errors (Van Niel et al., 2004)
• No thermal component, therefore, it is often coupled with solar insolation
• It cannot be implemented in the field
Why has the TRMI been habitually abandoned (e.g., Alan Taylor & Solomon
Dobrowski)?
Parker’s slope aspect can be incorporated into the segmentation process, whereas
the traditional (and anthropocentric!) azimuthal aspect cannot (Drăguţ & Blaschke,
2006).
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14. The following five geomorphometric TRMI layers were generated from a USGS
National Elevation Dataset (NED) 1/3 Arc Second DEM of Guadalupe Mountains
National Park (GUMO) in west Texas.
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16. The fD8 multiple flow direction (MFD) algorithm and a channel initiation threshold
were used in TAS and Whitebox GAT
(http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hydrogeo/Whitebox/) to generate this hydro-geomorphic
topographic position layer.
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17. The nine possible slope configurations, including the four deemed ecologically
irrelevant (and extremely difficult to account for in the field) by Parker when he
created the index thirty years ago, are now included in the segmentation of these
ecologically relevant ‘chorologic’ objects.
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18. A focal mean of the geomorphometric TRMI (shown here) instantiates the horizontal
coupling of the individual thermal/hydro-geomorphic TRMI pixels.
The previous four component parts and the final TRMI have been put on the same
footing for this segmentation. That is, they receive equal weights during the
segmentation performed by eCognition™.
And because the remaining steep gradients between classes (topographic position &
slope configuration) have been removed, no object is overdetermined or
underdetermined by any one of its components.
Of all the segmentations carried out thus far, this particular segmentation (scale
parameter: 4; shape: 0.1; compactness: 0.7) produced the lowest standard deviations
for each of the four component parts of the TRMI.
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19. These classified objects are now ready to be “encrusted” with surface accidents, i.e.,
spectral pixels of any spatial and spectral resolution (in this case, a high resolution
color IR image).
Further segmentations of these classified and ecologically relevant geomorphic
objects are now possible.
In addition, almost any so-called DEM “infidelities” can be mitigated using spectral
“encrustations” of this sort.
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20. Why QOBIA?
What would a QOBIA entail?
Why not OBIA and/or GEOBIA?
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22. “Figure 8. Knowledge and Belief are distinct because the theoretical argument
radically separates the fabrication (top) from its result (bottom), and because it
considers in Knowledge only the bottom left and in the Belief only in the top right
(the two empty rectangles)” (Latour, 2010).
…On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (2010)
The three sources of iconoclash: religion, science, and art (Latour, 2010).
( What is iconoclash? It is “that which happens when there is uncertainty about the
exact role of the hand at work in the production of a mediator” (Latour, 2010).)
“But what is one to make of scientific images in this context? Surely, these offer cold,
unmediated, objective representations of the world, and thus cannot trigger the
same passion and frenzy as the religious pictures. Contrary to the religious ones, they
simply describe the world in a way that can be proven true or false. Precisely because
they are cool, fresh, verifiable, and largely undisputed, they are the objects of a rare
and almost universal agreement. So the pattern of confidence, belief, rejection, and
spite is entirely different for them than the one generated by idols or icons. This is
why they offer different sorts of iconoclashes.
To begin with, for most people, they are not even images, but the world itself.
There is nothing to say about them but to learn their message. To call them image,
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23. inscription, or representation, to have them exposed in an exhibition side by side
with religious icons, is already an iconoclastic gesture. If those are mere
representations of galaxies, atoms, light, or genes, then one could say indignantly,
‘they are not real, they have been fabricated.’ And yet, as will be made apparent here,
it slowly becomes clearer that without huge and costly instruments, large groups of
scientists, vast amounts of money, and long training, nothing would be visible in such
images. It is because of so many mediations that they are able to be so objectively
true.
Here is another iconoclash, exactly opposite of the one raised by the worship of
religious image-destruction: the more instruments, the more mediation, the better
the grasp of reality…So the pattern of interference may allow us to rejuvenate our
understanding of image making: the more human-made images are generated, the
more objectivity will be collected. In science, there is no such thing as mere
representation” (Latour, 2010).
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24. “Figure 9. In actual practice the fabrication is no longer denied, and the question
shifts to the quality of the fabrication both for fetishes and for facts” (Latour, 2010).
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25. The speculative materialist Quentin Meillassoux is, of course, speaking of the
transcendental revolution when he says “From this point on,” but by simply replacing
intersubjectivity with the interobjectivity of object-oriented ontology (OOO) we can
clearly see how a realist object-oriented metaphysics can inform science, geography,
and GIS…from this point on.
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27. Bibliography
Bhaskar, R. (1975). A realist theory of science. London: Verso.
DeLanda, M. (2006). A new philosophy of society: Assemblage theory and social
complexity. London: Continuum.
DeLanda, M. (2010). Deleuze: History and science. New York: Atropos Press.
Drăguţ, L., Blaschke, T. (2006). Automated classification of landform elements using
object-based image analysis. Geomorphology. 81. 330-344.
Harman, G. (2005). Guerrilla metaphysics. Chicago: Open Court.
Harman, G. (2007). On vicarious causation. Collapse, II, 187-221.
Harman, G. (2008a). DeLanda’s ontology: Assemblage and realism. Cont. Philos. Rev.
41. 367-383.
Harman, G. (2008b). The prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics.
Melbourne: re.press.
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28. Harman, G. (2010a). Towards speculative realism: essays and lectures. Winchester:
Zero Books.
Harman, G. (2010b). I am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 28.5. 772-790.
Harman, G. (2010c). Time, space, essence, and eidos: A new theory of causation.
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. 6.1.
1-17.
Harman, G. (2011a). The road to objects. Continent. 1.3. 171-179.
Harman, G. (20011b). The quadruple object. Winchester: Zero Books.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2010). On the modern cult of the factish gods. Durham: Duke University
Press.
Meillassoux, Q. (2008). After finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency.
London: Continuum.
Morton, T. (2011). Objects as temporary autonomous zones. Continent. 1.3. 149-155.
Morton, T. (2007). Ecology without nature: Rethinking environmental aesthetics.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Parker, A.J. (1982). The topographic relative moisture index: An approach to soil
moisture assessment in mountain terrain. Physical Geography. 3.
160-168.
Van Niel, K., Laffan, S., Lees, B. (2004). Effect of error in the DEM on
environmental variables for predictive vegetation modelling.
Journal of Vegetation Science. 15. 747-756.
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