Sanford Kwinter [The Genealogy of Models: The Hammer and the Song]

“[Diagrams] are abstract because conceptually and ontologically distinct from material reality yet they are fully functioning machines nonetheless, that is, they are agencies of assemblage, organization and deployment. Reality, to speak a bit reductively, is comprised both of matter and the organization of that raw matter into deployable objects or complexes. The argument, stated simply is as follows: to every organized entity there corresponds a micro-regime of forces that endows it with its general shape and program. Every object is a composition of forces, and the compositional event is the work or expression of an abstract machine.”

Sanford Kwinter, ‘The Genealogy of Models: The Hammer and the Song’, Oase, no.48, p.34.