Hatomista

Hatomista is a fictional philosophical and cultural movement that appears in speculative literature and game design. The term is used to describe a framework that emphasizes the active role of small-scale elements in shaping larger systems, proposing that micro interactions can have outsized effects on social, technological, and ecological networks. Although the concept has no real-world scholarly consensus, it is discussed in fan essays, worldbuilding guides, and modular game settings as a means of exploring causality, responsibility, and complexity.

The idea emerged in the early 21st century within a mosaic of interlinked narratives; the best-known articulation is attributed to the fictional thinker Y. Hato in the novella The Hatomist Manifesto. Since then, various authors have expanded the idea, sometimes rebranding it for interactive media.

Core tenets include: (1) atom-level agency: entities—from particles to agents—are seen as nodes in networks with emergent properties; (2) democratization of complexity: complex outcomes arise from simple rules and local interactions; (3) ethical focus on stewardship: responsibility extends to objects and infrastructures undergoing transformation; (4) situated cognition: knowledge is inseparable from context and practice.

In game or fiction contexts, practitioners study "hat studies" or "micro-labs" to simulate how minor changes propagate through a system.

Reception is mixed; fans praise its elegance in modeling, while scholars view it as speculative and primarily fictional; some caution that it should not be conflated with real theories of complex systems or actor-network theory.