The paper tries to find an intermediary zone between metaphysics - especially that of Whitehead- and sociology or social history of science. It offers a sketchy but robust vocabulary to define the spatio-temporal envelop of phenomena, without having to take decisions on their existence or non-existence. The notion of network is then given a more precise metaphysics by pursuing how a phenomenon is then extended, through standardization and reformatting, into the classical status of existing or non-existing objetcs.