Ubiety

"Toward a Comparative Japanese-Austronesian I" by Takao Kawamoto demonstrates that Japanese is cognate with the Austronesian family of languages, the Pacific languages. The demonstration bases itself on pairing a few hundreds of words of Old Japanese (OJ) with words of Proto-Austronesian (PA) or one of its branches. What was this world like in those ancient times? I have heard theories that in ancient Pre-Columbian times, Pacific Islanders made voyages reaching as far as the Pacific coasts of the Americas. I believe such did happen. So, there were likely contacts between Polynesian tribes and Amerindian tribes. "Linguistic Evidence for a Prehistoric Polynesia—Southern California Contact Event" by Kathryn Klar and Terry L. Jones expounds on the theme, mentioning the Amerindian language groups Chumashan and Gabrielino in southern California. Some Pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and Polynesia is evident from the ubiety of the South American sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) in Polynesian archaeological sites, most notably from Mangaia, Cook Islands (circa 1000 CE).

Ubiety is a Term used with reſpect to ſpiritual Beings, as Locality is with regard to corporeal ones, and is the very ſame Thing, viz. that Part of Space which circumſcribes the Exiſtence of Things at any given Moment of Time, and is commonly call'd their Place.

The place of a ſpirit has been often called ubiety, which may moſt properly refer to ſo much of the material world, of which it has a more evident conſciouſneſs, and on which it can act : In God the infinite Spirit, his ubiety is whereſoever there are objects for his conſiouſneſs and activity : And you may extend this to all poſſible, as well as real and actual worlds, if you pleaſe; for he knows and can do whatever can be known or can be done, and therefore he is ſaid to be every where.

Physical existence, thus, is essentially spatiotemporal ubiety; and that which has or lacks ubiety, that is, is or is not present at some place in space at some time, is always some what or kind—which may be a kind of substance, or of property, or of relation, or of activity, or of change, or of state, and so on.

Swain refers to this "history of Australian Aboriginal being" as a "hermeneutics of ubiety," that is, a hermeneutics of whereness or of being in a definite place.