 A related option is a kind of pragmatism. Hans Primas argues that, strictly speaking, a quantum mechanical description of a molecule has to be a whole-universe description. No matter how we draw the boundaries of interest around some target molecular system, in reality, the system is open and interacting with everything else in the universe. Thus the shape of any particular molecule could be the result of its interactions with anything else in the universe. We only get the paradox of molecules having no shape when we treat systems as closed—say a single methane molecule alone in the universe. It is fine to treat open systems as closed for pragmatic purposes, but we should always understand that this is an idealization. We shouldn’t treat our idealizations, such as open systems being closed, as veridical. Hence there is no incompatibility between quantum mechanics and molecular shape (Primas 1981).