As we edge toward 2026, if we were to track back over some of the books
Open Humanities Press has published in 2025, we would begin with October's
Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2nd edition, with a new
Preface) by Timothy Morton.
Like all Open Humanities Press books, Realist Magic is available open
access (= it can be downloaded for free):
https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/realist-magic-2nd-ed/
Book description
Object-oriented ontology offers a startlingly fresh way to think about
causality that takes into account developments in physics since 1900.
Causality, argues Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), is aesthetic. In this
book, Timothy Morton explores what it means to say that a thing has come
into being, that it is persisting, and that it has ended. Drawing from
examples in physics, biology, ecology, art, literature and music, Morton
demonstrates the counterintuitive yet elegant explanatory power of OOO
for thinking causality.
With a new Preface by Timothy Morton.
Author Bio
Morton is the author of the libretto Time, Time, Time (opera by Jennifer
Walshe, 2019), and of numerous artworks including We Are the Asteroid
(with Justin Guariglia, 2019); Come Fast from the Dark (with Andrew
Melchior, 2024); and This Huge Sunlit Abyss From The Future Right There
Next To You (with Björk, 2015). In 2018 Morton co-wrote and appeared
with Jeff Bridges in Living in the Future’s Past, directed by Susan
Kucera. Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English at Rice University.
Morton has written Hell: in Search of a Christian Ecology (Columbia,
2024), All Art Is Ecological (Penguin, 2021), Spacecraft (Bloomsbury,
2021), Being Ecological (Penguin, 2018), Humankind: Solidarity with
Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future
Coexistence (Columbia, 2016), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism
(Chicago, 2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of
the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality
(Open Humanities Press, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010),
Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), 8 other books and 300+ essays on
philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.
Series
The book is published as part of the New Metaphysics series:
https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/series/new-metaphysics/
Series Design
The New Metaphysics series design is by Katherine Gillieson with cover
illustrations by Tammy Lu.
--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University
Director of Open Humanities Press: http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Blog: http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/
Latest:
Book: Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative
Intelligence: http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/
Video: 'Liquidate AI Art', Computer Arts Society:
https://www.bcs.org/events-calendar/2025/october/webinar-liquidate-ai-art
Talk: 'The Independent Intellectual vs Posting Zero and the Dead Internet':
http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2025/12/2/the-independent-intellectual-vs-posting-zero-and-the-dead-in.html
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