Network synthesis depends on units of "one," which are drawn from, and embedded within, the diversity of the "many." Action is producing an overflow of reference; talk, group, and grid are informing this reference with self-reference, thus giving it a frame, a number, and an order; and society is providing for re-entries, which do not exactly reflect the whole form, but account for the unmarked state coming with both reference and self-reference.

Neither objects nor subjects are to be considered as the *hypokeimenon*, the underlying reality of network synthesis. Neither aristotelian objects nor kantian subjects, neither the things of the literal society nor the reason of the printing press society, are able to cover what self-organization there is in any society, let alone the computer grid society. Of course, both Aristotle and Kant are well aware of this. Aristotle's categories focus on the object only to discover the elusiveness of substance, the indecision of relation, the ambiguity of quality, and the variety of movement. And Kant's categories focus on the subject only to discover that the synthesis of the manifold is to be brought about by reason only if the latter is able to distinguish between the logical functions of quantity, quality, relation (including that of the community of the actor and the sufferer), and modality, all of them adding up to a faculty of judgment, which relies on analytical separation as much as on synthetical integration. To keep the synthesis clear of loosing itself among the manifold again, it has to be anchored firmly in the transcendental, that is in the unmarked state, which here, and thereby, becomes the place for both the hopes of idealism and the despair of romanticism.

Ever since, it is questionable of where to fix possible categories, which are able to describe network synthesis. Charles Sanders Peirce is looking for categories able to capture the accidental "it" which lends quality (a ground), relation (a correlate), and representation (an interpretant) to substance and being. Frank North Whitehead quite similarly focuses on the category of the creativity, of the world taken as a process, to explain how the disjunctive many of the universe come to inform actual entities that combine self-identity and self-diversity. Gregory Bateson and Robert M. Pirsig look at the category of quality as a category to explain, or, better, call upon, both substance and relation.

Paying due respect to the many epistemological turns of twentieth century's philosophy, from the linguistic to the iconic, and from the social to the postcolonial, we propose to switch from objects and subjects to *catjects* as informing the network synthesis of social action. Objects and subjects are special cases of catjects, which describe the general case of synthesis brought about by distinctions recursively organizing themselves. This is no new idea as is witnessed by objects becoming "quasi-objects" (Michel Serres), "hybrids" (Bruno Latour), and "boundary objects" (Susan Leigh Star), or by both subjects and objects becoming "unjects" (Peter Fuchs), all of them thereby taking into account not only the manifold of relations, but also the ambiguity of meaning and the combination of reference, self-reference, and some general network value, any institution of "one" is embedded within.

Categories do not come for free, they are products of the same social action which relies on them to organize its reference, self-reference, and network value. Studies into the epistemology of the grammar of motives (Kenneth Burke), the order of things (Michel Foucault), and the semantics of social structure (Reinhart Koselleck, Niklas Luhmann) have always been explicit about this. Our idea of the network synthesis of social action with respect to the next society superposing itself to the tribal, the ancient, and the modern society proposes to look anew at the theoretical, or, as it is, sociological, foundations of any research into categories by asking what catjects are able to come from, and to organize, the overflow of reference, symbol, criticism, and memory-control.

We are here only interested in the catjects of the next society, assuming, however, that the research into relations between semantics and social structure we just quoted not by chance arises with the appearance of, first, the motion pictures attempting to communicate the whole of perception, and, then, the computer presenting society with its overflow of memory-control. We nevertheless stick with the latter and ask for catjects organizing society's dealing with the overflow of networked memory-control. Note, however, that a parallel analysis of, for instance, Russian art and architecture dealing with motion pictures could be revealing about ways to capture an overflow of control with respect to the organization of perception.

Our general idea is that, given an overflow of meaning presented with by action, all other variables of our model, that is talk, group, grid, and society, step in to organize, and thereby self-organize, the capture, number, order, and re-entry of that meaning, such that catjects emerge as selective bundles among the values of the variables of the form of social action. Action, as ever, is producing the overflow. It relies on second-order observation to receive a form whatsoever. This means that action, or, better, acting (Alfred Schütz), can be left to itself, thus constituting a micro-diversity of events that may or may not be attributed to either action or situation. That micro-diversity of action is both necessary for, and not sufficient to, the self-organization of social action, because the diversity of action informs the social action without being able to instruct it, having to wait, instead, for social action to lend it its attribution, allocation, and interpretation.

It is with the selective handling of the overflow via the frames of a *culture* form that catjects come into being. This gives any social action an air of virtuality, to begin with, which is why social systems are sometimes interpreted as symbolic systems (Helmut Willke). If they do not succeed in organizing their dealing with signs by the means of signs – remember that symbols, for us, are signs signifying signs –, they do not stand a chance to approach their reality by using degrees of freedom in selectively addressing and exploring it.

Thus, the culture form of social action, looked after by the talking taking care of the acting, throws in a selectivity of reference and self-reference which is both risky and necessary, and can only be managed by lending it arbitrariness, ambivalence, and discretion, thus reproducing, in forms rather tame in comparison with the original one, the overflow of meaning. In order to not loose out of mind the problem of selection and, coming with it, the problem of perspective, it is necessary to never really accomplish the task of numbering, ordering, and re-entering the meaning of the social, which is why so called post-modern thinking has rediscovered the virtue of the vague and unfinished, of the unknown and unknowable, all of them at any time inviting next steps, next perspectives, next considerations, at the same time as decisiveness and coolness, in dealing with them.

If talk is taking care of the culture by searching for words and gestures, by proposing and withdrawing reference, and by revealing and concealing self-reference, group is taking care of *number*. Gaming, that is, is being done in order to be able to count in, or out, a group, which comprises events, things, and persons. Group is number which adds up to calling a unit among the many by a name which recalls other units. Cultural analysis like Clifford Geertz's is best when dealing with observations of kinds of counting procedures.

Grid, then, is *order* emerging from ties. They cannot avoid to come with their own contingency, i.e. the possibility to dissolve for some other tie. Grid is order which indicates that any call can be undone, or can be cancelled, because any call is nothing but the compensation of its own improbability, if not impossibility. That is why cultural theory excels the moment it looks at fetish, taboo, and negation organizing the self-imposition of otherwise empty signs (including MacGuffins).

And society provides for *re-entries* able to invite, and organize, switchings with respect to attempts to know the unmarked state. If number and order stick, re-entries unravel such that new knots become possible. References to the unmarked state unsettle both references and self-references already found such that all kinds of therapy, including the most powerful of all, communication, may step in to propose and cultivate new references and self-references. Somehow, cultural studies just started to look into that business of the society to tie, and untie, the knots which are presented with the catjects in use. Cultural studies may well be suited to such an endeavor since it may inherit old humanities', or *humaniora's* (Immanuel Kant), task of looking into the psychophysics of the social and the cultural, thus schooling the cognitive abilities of humans.