I think I can somewhat glean what you're saying, but I feel like this is a part of reality, not something beyond it. The fact that this similarity exists betwee

I think I can somewhat glean what you're saying, but I feel like this is a part of reality, not something beyond it. The fact that this similarity exists between these seemingly disparate things is a part of reality. Consider this: the functor notion is saying that any thing can be put into a list, that any thing can either be present or missing, and so forth. This is a commonality between the concept of list and the concept of possibly-present-thing (an option type). It also allows you to express some very elegant code in a uniform manner. This is not making the claim that they are the one and the same operation on some deeper level, just noticing the commonality and presenting a uniform interface based on the commonality.