A butterfly is like another butterfly。 A butterfly is also like a leaf and at the same time like a paper airplane， an owl's face， a scholar flying from book to book。 The most disparate things approach one another in a butterfly， the sort of dense nodule of likeness that Roger Caillois once proposed called a "bizarre-privileged item。" In response， critical theorist Paul North proposes a spiritual exercise: imagine a universe made up solely of likenesses。 There are no things， only traits acting according to the law of series， here and there a thick overlap that appears "bizarre。"

Centuries of thought have fixated on the concept of difference。 This book offers a theory that begins from likeness， where， at any instant， a vast array of series proliferates and remote regions come into contact。 Bizzare-Privileged Items in the Universe follows likenesses as they traverse physics and the physical universe; evolution and evolutionary theory; psychology and the psyche; sociality， language， and art。 Divergent sources from an eccentric history give shape to a new trans-science， "homeotics。"