v Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual'
'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'
Systemists will find much here: 'principle of least action', 'principle of least resistance', equilibrium, open / closed systems, and entropy. A useful question is posed: 'Is complexity increasing? Is that average complexity across the universe; or the complexity of the most complex object? Deleuzes's Difference and Repetition is quoted:
'The values of implication are centres of envelopment. These centres are not the intensive individuating factors themselves, but they are their representatives within a complex whole in the process of explication. ...' (p.255-6)'
Reading this I immediately thought of Bohm, who followed shortly after (still in Chapter 1!). In chapter 1, 'Chaos' could be read as Cosmos, hence the term rolling them together - chaosmos. This is the tract from which existence and becoming arise (re-reading). Deleuze's awareness of physics and quantum theory and its influence on his work is discussed, with chapter 2 providing continuity reaching to Leibniz (and 'The Calculating God'), also contributing is 'the complete concept', 'principle of sufficient reason', 'intensive individuating factors' and 'principle of identity of indiscernibles', for example. Even while the context is metaphysics (and it is not!), (for me) this seemingly presages a comprehensive health assessment:
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| Order and the Virtual |
'The necessity in question is the necessary inclusion of all predicates pertaining to an individual in the complete concept of that individual.' p.24.
A reason to look up Lautman's philosophy is that it -
'... entails a dialectic; a dialectic comprised of the movement of Ideas. While a given theory may achieve the desired tractability of the paradoxical element in question, this can only be the provisional resolution of the problem. This does not imply that the paradoxical element is in itself resolved; it retains its disruptive powers, its `remainder` within the explanatory framework, which will itself once again redistribute, redeploy, in an inevitable encounter with the next explanatory framework. In this sense (a sense which Deleuze embellishes), the 'problem' and the 'solution' are profoundly different in kind to question and answer. Whereas an answer might be understood to put a question to rest, the solution cannot resolve the problem finally.'
Plato's perpetual questioning wins the day and night (that is 24 hour care). This is why, for me Hodges' model is powerful - "Nursing: Be the difference"^ - and more relevant than ever:
Self-Knowledge/Care Literacies Reasoning* | KNOWLEDGE - FACTS ... Self-Knowledge for Self-care |
| Dialectic* Guided discovery Perpetual questioning |
Education Government provision Access for all Voice(s): being heard* |
Ross explains that Deleuze is not limited to the realm of mathematics:
and: 'By Ideas, we do not mean models whose mathematical entities would only be copies, but in the true Platonic Idea sense of the term, the structural schemas acccording to which effective theories are organised.'
Is the 'paradoxical agent' at work here, now a digitalized homonculus ready to preside acting as a superior dialectic that runs over the stream of conciousness? Hodges' model is a conceptual framework and ever-ready (we hope) aide-mémoire:
'Problems are always dialectical; the dialectic has no other sense, nor do problems have any other sense. What is mathematical (or physical, biological, psychical or sociological) are the solutions' (DR, 179).' (p.43).
In Hodges' model, the solutions are fixed in time, for what is (usually) an ongoing situation and context. Certain results in mathematics may be fixed, appear as a standing wave, but the flux, dyanamic remains. And, with it noise that is incessant and increasingly political.
This is a challenging, but rewarding read.
^Have constant regard for representation, creation, being, becoming and how this affects and impacts (the) becoming.
Many thanks to Edinburgh University Press for my review copy.
More to follow here ...Bill Ross (2024) Order and the Virtual: The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-order-and-the-virtual.html
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
