Operation (n.) is what the form-and-matter story leaves in the dark: it sees the worker's hands and the finished brick, but the real event, clay taking shape against the mold, happens unseen in between.
Operation (n.) is a relation with weight: it joins a smooth energy to a grainy structure and so becomes the real go-between of the two.
An Operation (n.) is whatever makes a structure appear or alters one; neither it nor a structure can be defined except by example.
Operation (n.) counted as being for the seventeenth century: to act on something was no longer to alter it but to make it what it is.
An Operation (n.) is a go-between: it takes one structure and hands back another, yet it is unlike either of them.