Dr. H. Abernathy — Page of Miscellany

Researcher · Department of Applied Mereology · Somewhere Uphill University
Office: Room 217B, behind the photocopier · Hours: W 10–12, or by appointment

1. About

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I am an associate researcher working on the unfashionable edges of applied mereology — the study of parts, wholes, and the awkward paperwork between them. My recent work examines why mundane objects persist longer than the systems that produced them. Previously I trained as a philosopher, briefly as a carpenter, and less briefly as a bad clarinet player.

Current interests: object persistence, inventories, the semiotics of the “miscellaneous” drawer, and the phrase “we've always done it this way.”

“A whole is not more than the sum of its parts; it is merely more stapled together.”

2. Selected publications

Please do not cite the preprints without emailing me first. They are preprints for a reason.

NEW: A revised appendix to Parts Without Wholes is here. Corrects the footnote on page 211 about my grandmother's toolbox, which was wrong in ways I am still being teased about.

3. Teaching

• PHIL-214 — Intro to Applied Mereology. Fall. Large lecture hall, small class. syllabus
• PHIL-318 — Objects, Things, and Stuff. Spring. Seminar, capped at 14. syllabus
• PHIL-602 — Graduate workshop on inventories. By invitation & a coffee.

Office hours

Wednesdays 10:00–12:00, plus whenever the door is open and I am visibly not crying at a spreadsheet. Please do not email to ask if you should come to office hours. Yes. The answer is yes.

4. Appointment form

I answer email eventually. This form is slightly faster, except when it is not.

5. Useful / useless links

1. The department page — reliable, in a 2004 way.
2. My CV (PDF, 1.2 MB, last updated in March)
3. Errata collected across my entire career — sorted by embarrassment.
4. A list of good pencils — maintained since 2011. Not a joke.
5. The library index under construction since 2014

Mini code sample — because a colleague insisted

# count the parts in a whole
def count_parts(whole):
    return sum(1 for _ in whole) - 1
    # the −1 is for the whole itself;
    # this has caused two arguments and one divorce

6. Colophon

This page is hand-written HTML. It does not use a framework. It is not responsive on small screens, and I apologise for nothing. The typeface is Times New Roman, as God intended, with Courier where code pretends to live. Links turn yellow on hover as an affordance; they turn green after you have visited them, a choice made in 1994 by the author — at that time aged 9 — that has stubbornly refused to change.