So Many Numbers and So Much about Measurement: Quantity in Wu Ming-Yi's So Much Water So Close to Home

So Many Numbers and So Much about Measurement: Quantity in Wu Ming-Yi's So Much Water So Close to Home

In this article, I will address the roles played by quantity in Wu Ming-Yi's consideration of nature in Jia li shuibian name jin (So Much Water So Close to Home). I will first examine how he brings the qualitative properties of nature to life by reference to nature's quantitative properties while equally accentuating the importance of the latter. Then, I will investigate a special quantitative term-＂one,＂ which can be understood as ＂one-system＂-and discuss how it structures Wu's depiction of nature both according to and beyond James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis and Bruce Clarke's revision of Lovelock. Finally, I will explore how So Much Water anticipates Timothy Morton's notion of hyperobjects, namely objects with very large but finite magnitude in time and/or space, and how the book treats Benoit B. Mandelbrot's concept of fractal as a different, if not better, way of dealing with these hyper-sized objects. In the conclusion, I will touch briefly upon the ambiguous quantity ＂x,＂ which summarizes the above-mentioned senses of quantity.