iii Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual'

'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

My book 'reviews' are unconventional in that they are not journal fare (format and quality-wise...); the book, or my reading of it - invariably refers to Hodges' model. I could argue that is not my fault, but a quality, something built in to the model. Anyway, what of the physical book itself?

The cover image is a marvel: Stone Quartet 1 by Patrick Haughton. 
[ Did someone say 'quartet'!* 😉]

Cover design by www.paulsmithdesign.com

Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon, the fonts and styling through the book is clear, and easy to read (without regard to the technical content). The paper is thick, the quality contributing to a high contrast. 

The contents:

Abbreviations
Preface by Robin Durie and David Webb
1. Chaos
2. Entropy and the Complete Concept in Leibniz and Deleuze
3. Order
4. Order as Complexity
5. Sufficient Reason as Dissymmetry and the Evolutionary Paradigm
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

The EUP website only lists four chapters for Order and the Virtual, but the book clearly has five. The conclusion is similarly omitted online: running from pp.175-181, I wish I'd written it.

That nursing and healthcare practice are bound up in philosophical considerations, values and ethics is fairly obvious. Care dilemmas would arise, calling for a multidisciplinary approach, and cross-disciplinary advice. Through this book, Bill Ross keeps highlighting for me, the way that once the uniform is donned, or the clock denotes an inbetweenness '0900-1700' for community staff, philosophy goes on the back-burner. The heat of the issue, and first rule of first-aid is felt, but it is not the primary concern. There is an international group of scholars for philosophy in nursing (and journal), but practitioners have, by definition - a job to do. If time is chaos and complexity (or appears as), then in health it is continuity, avoiding disruption and more often trying to 'heal' it.

Although Hodges' model presents as a symmetry; it is anything but. If we wish to symmetry-break, Hodges' model may assist. The flux and dynamics of care [insert your context] means that Hodges' model constantly changes its shape, form. Not as an objective statement, but an interpretation. Bill Ross's discussion on Nietzchean chaos and the superior principle of sufficient reason, demands and rewards a close reading (as does the whole text). Whether it is chaos, equilibrium, law and possibility cognitive - conceptual spaces invite ergodic (a cyclic) exploration. The mix of Deleuze and Leibniz's system makes for complex ideas, one probably needs to swim in. The book's first chapters are deep, technical but also inviting. There are encouraging links to psychotherapeutic thought, in the philosophy of difference, and how this is recognised, and change negotiated.

The scale is cosmological, with a section on ergodicity; and (inevitably) time, as per the quotation (p.10):

'Everything which happens and everything which appears is correlated with orders of differences: differences of level, temperature, pressure, tension, potential, difference of intensity. Carnot's principle says this in one way, Curie's principle in another, Gilles Deleuze (DR, 222)' (DR - Difference and Repetition).

There is a ponderous sense when assessment is routinized: assessment must be comprehensive. Do: tick all the boxes. Don't miss anything! How many levels of assessment should there be? If you want this number of assessments, what should I leave out? It is fascinating how we can frame time, not just 'set' against the axes of  Hodges' model, but a product of lifestyle, bio-physics, and even bio-psycho-social-politics. Is back to Earth - back to the individual? Not now. Contrast chronological and pathological time and not just for humanity. Ross follows Deleuze, Poincare, Neitzche and others in the long-term diagnosis of the universe, no less. A heat-death: the anti-fever. Now there's the collective, while in mental health, a diagnosis (or two ...) is still (often) contested, at least on twitter/X.

'The distinction for me is that metaphysics lives in that plane above where the concepts are not tied specifically to one field, but remain free to mobilise the salient questions as they play out among several fields.' p.15.

I don't think this just applies to metaphysics, but the extent (now) to which problems (clinical and generally) are multi- inter- and transdisciplinary (Ross acknowledges the pragmatic). Otherwise, with each step across a disciplinary boundary, our concepts lose their meaning, and the ergodic action (the around and around, back and forth ... our models and frameworks) is more akin to a drunken random-walk.

More to follow ...

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

*And is that the fifth domain floating above?

The preface is titled 'Playing Cortázarian Hopscotch':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Cort%C3%A1zar_novel)

There is also a brief  'Series Editor's Preface'

Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual' ii

'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

Now I can say: "This year, Hodges' model will be presented at WCCS 6th World Conference on Complex Systems", so current reading needs to match this project. And, it does. In spades, in fact c/o and with thanks to Edinburgh University Press. Look at chapter 1! 'Chaos' with Mandelbrot fractals, smooth space drawing from Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. For readers unfamiliar with the Deleuzian oeuvre, abbreviations of texts that feature in Bill Ross's book Order and the Virtual are listed (xii) and includes key sources by Michel Serres, Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. This works as you mentally take a note, of work to lookup. Almost twenty years ago, I related some ideas of Michel Serres to Hodges' model:

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109. 

Ross discusses the extent and proximity of Deleuze's thought to chaos, complexity theory and science more generally as identified by commentators. Now up to chapter 4, it would have helped to have a look at the bibliography at the book's end. Deleuze saw how his work resonated with chaos theory. Steve Strogatz's book (now in a 3rd edition):

Strogatz, S.H. (2015) Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Application to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering. 2^nd edition. Perseus Books Publishing, Cambridge. 

- explains in the introduction how 'home computing' contributed to the aesthetic appeal of fractals, which could display incredible patterns derived from seemingly simple mathematics. Even though, the programs often required many hours of running to deliver their results.

In the late 1980s I was fascinated with a subscription to Fractal Report:

https://stephen.shawweb.co.uk/Fractalreportindex.html

The relevance for me of Order and the Virtual is apparent on page 1, Deleuze and Guattari's thought having an immediate transdisciplinary application, crossing boundaries, and the creation of regions of bifurcation. Ross connects Deleuze's thought and Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers' text:

Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. London: Heinemann, 1984 

Ross is encouraging (to me and for Hodges' model), as he notes how the notions may be inexact, but they are nonetheless rigorous. Spanning as they do, philosophy, science - what is scientific(? - itself a boundary - demarcation) and artistic. I've often thought of Hodges' model as filled with folds, and multiple bifurcations. It looks like Bill Ross is going help me to isolate several, and possibly make my search more efficient (the latter really would assist). The memorial event held in Manchester last September was revalatory. Since the early 2000s I'd grown to  really appreciate the availability of books by Michel Serres. I was not aware of the force behind the Clinamen Press, which Bill Ross established in 1999. 'Clinamen' is a useful concept too, which I have encountered previously, through Serres and Lucretius. 

Readers new to philosophy, sociology and the development of ideas must often grapple with a new and specific vocabulary. This is a primary purpose of such texts. On page 2 the springboard is sprung, the Event is key in Deleuzian scholarship. The Event is a force for creative and disruptive force for thought,  idea generation and creativity. The Event is experienced in our current 'realities' of: time and space (Kronos) where things are actualised, and the virtual (Aion) - the pure Event. This lack of hesitation is welcome. Our 'virtual' world quickly provides access to reading:

parrhesia 27 · 2017 · 1-12
extract from the birth of physics
michel serres, translated by david webb, with an introduction by bill ross
https://parrhesiajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/parrhesia27_serres.pdf

Where you have bifurcations, you have convergences and divergences, stasis, state - stasis or not, paths, a series and metrics. We are reminded that science is not just about theory - metaphysics, it is, sleeves rolled-up about doing too; as I've noted in subsequent reading. As 'chaos' predicts, there is no let up,  the Choasmos, quickly follows. I'm thinking of a 'situation' clinically as a rollercoaster - 'constant displacement' seeking a difference, and repetition, the ravages of alcohol, dementia, low mood, psychosis, obsession and compulsive 'states'. The chaosmos is central in Hodges' model, although as both continua and oppositions. Ross explains how Deleuze's chaosmos is not necessarily scientific, but belongs to the ancient cosmologies of the Greeks (p.3). I thought of flux here. 'Parity' is not just a physical metric, but a quality that acts, seeks resolution - equilibrium(?) - between the mental chaos and physical chaos.*

Thinkers like Deleuze 'trap' words, concepts, in boxes, drawing from other other sources (for chaosmos - with Guattari again); then they can be examined and tested for their scope, application, meaning and association. Hodges' model provides a trap, for any situation. Not as specific as a physicist's ion (or Penning) trap, but the model can act as a series of holistic traps. To provide a metric of holistic bandwidth.

*Of course, equilibrium is never found - until the 'End'; such is the nature of flux. 

More to follow...

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

Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual' i

'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

'ORDER and the VIRTUAL'

The preface, pp.ix-xi - 'Playing Cortázarian Hopscotch' begins:

'Gilles Deleuze argued that the most significant characteristic of an encounter is that it forces us to think. Order and the Virtual dramatises multiple encounters between the philosophies of Deleuze, Michel Serres, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Leibniz and Lucretius, and the scientific theories of general relativity, quantum mechanics, information theory, thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, chaos theory and complexity theory. Each of these encounters forces the reader to think anew, to imagine new possibilities for both philosophical and scientific thought. Each encounter also reveals the depth with which Bill Ross himself had thought about these matters.'

Reading Order and the Virtual, I am beyond the preface, but can see the point regards the depth of Bill Ross's reading of a broad range of philosophy and thought (which can be distinct).

The care die is rolled in the first sentence:

'Gilles Deleuze argued that the most significant characteristic 
of an encounter is that it forces us to think.'

When the encounter is clinical, complexity rains, and you really do need to think.

As the professions continue to find out. 

Finding and attending the workshop in September, Bill Ross's legacy and his book is a welcome coincidence as I write and prepare for April's conference. Much more to follow ...

Many thanks to Edinburgh University Press for my copy.

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

See also:
https://www.thebsp.org.uk/bill-ross-memorial-workshop-deleuzian-cosmologies/

https://technophany.philosophyandtechnology.network/article/view/24392

'Serres'

Info Smörgåsbord

Going through papers (again) I saved 'Infovore' from New Scientist back in 2006. Individually and collectively we are hungry for information (even when asleep - in the form of dreams?), hence we are infovores. The brief article explains work by Bierderman and Vessel, Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain. Information gives us a high via a "type of chemical receptor known as mu-opioid".

If time ever permits I would like to write again about 'information':

The pull quote reads: 

"Information that triggers the most memories causes the greatest pleasure"

Clearly from 2006 there may be further studies to consider, but revisiting this since 1996 a new paper would incorporate the informational dimensions of Hodges' model. The pull quote with its emphasis on memory and pleasure begs discussion of persons living with dementia.

Another saved newspaper concerned a book review from 2015 Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies by César Hidalgo. Searching here on W2tQ there's no post about this text - hence why it's still gathering dust.

https://www.ft.com/content/36cad2c0-1038-11e5-ad5a-00144feabdc0in

Finally and related to 'information', data and knowledge are the way Hodges' model suggests and can make explicit disciplinary bridge as posted previously 

[ https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2009/08/combining-h2cm-informing-science-and.html ].

For me, the FT is expensive, (as mentioned before) so I want to squeeze out all the value I can. Another page, by Gillian Tett (2014) discusses "How should we analyse our lives?" The book here is Alex "Sandy" Pentland's Social Physics.

This scratches the surface of papers [a few printed, the majority now on Zotero], other items from the quality press and science media I've kept.

I mention this as after this month all I will be posting [ and tweeting @h2cm ] are the remaining book reviews and other occasional items. A new citation is worthy of a post and celebration for Hodges' model - added already to the bibliography listing in the sidebar. Again if you can add to the bibliography, are interested in using Hodges' model and writing too please let me know. I'm conscious here and on twitter I feel I'm repeating myself and rather wasting my time. That said in mitigation and a blatant excuse the past 18 months has enforced a holding pattern on us all. When the pattern breaks I'd like to be 'elsewhere' in terms of any teaching opportunities, completing some writing and addressing the outstanding lack of a digital presence.

Thanks for your visit and time.

The Word, Infovore, New Scientist, 22 July 2006, p.56. (Sorry no more details).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125612-200-the-word-infovore/

Bierderman, I., Vessel, E. Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain, American Scientist. May-June 2006, Volume 94, Number 3, p.247. DOI: 10.1511/2006.59.247
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/perceptual-pleasure-and-the-brain

Gillian Tett (2014) "How should we analyse our lives?", FT Weekend, Magazine, January 14-15, p.46.

Jones, P. (1996) Humans, Information, and Science, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(3),591-598.

After'math' II of... The Difference that Makes a Difference

Continuing in the vein of challenging and stimulating ....

It seems there are several people attributed with the saying "the map is not the territory". The debate around maps and territories came up in discussion and is frequently raised on psychology and therapy discussion lists. At DTMD I referred to h2cm as a cognitive periplus, which I came across in Cunliffe's book The Voyages of Pytheas. Basically, ancient mariners would draw a map, a periplus of the coastlines for navigation and an outline of land masses. During the meeting I came to equate the basic features on the coast as data; buildings or smoke as information; and the conclusions derived as knowledge. Whether to proceed inland well, that is about pioneering, courage and wisdom.

A challenge comes with the DTMD talk of information theories. The DTMD workshop was promoted as a forum to discuss and expand our collective understanding of what we mean by information in our different disciplines.

What would an information theory based on the knowledge domains look like? Given the presence of the SCIENCES domain then the mathematical and logic-based theories are already determined for us, are the specific information theories and models that relate to the physicality, the entropic journey of the body? What information theories can we identify for the other domains:

• INTRA-INTERPERSONAL?
• SOCIAL?
• POLITICAL?
• and the spiritual, unknown?

If we categorised the 25 info theories listed by Paolo Rocchi in his session how might they be distributed across the h2cm domains?

Here is part of the listing c/o Prof. Rocchi and with many thanks:

• The statistical theory of information by Shannon (1949);
• The algorithmic theory of information by Solomonoff, Kolmogorov (1965), and Chaitin (1977);
• The economic theory of information by Marschak (1971);
• The living system information theory by Miller (1978);
• The autopoietic theory of information by Maturana, Varela (1980);
• The biological information theory by Jablonka (2002);
• The cybernetic information theory by Nauta jr. (1970);
• The dynamic theory of information by Chernavsky (1990);
• The fisherian theory of information by Fisher (1950);
• The general information theory by Klir (1991);
• The general theory of information by Burgin (2009). ...

What is the result? What criteria determines the final domain 'home'? On what basis can we differentiate such theories - quantitatively and qualitatively? As noted at DTMD where are the family resemblances? Perhaps they can be found within the care domains:

Sciences - inclusion of a mathematical - logical underpinning (There be equations in the hold!)?
Social - reference to social and family networks without explicit recourse to mathematics? The use of psycho-social concepts?
Interpersonal - reductionist-wholist rendering that incorporates perception, individual information processing? What can be drawn from the latest research in anxiety and psychoses for example? Is it appropriate to wonder if ontological* approaches have anything to offer?
Political - Theories that cover economics and also explain power relations, decision making, and choice for example? 

Even though when we see / read the word 'unified' you tread carefully, Hodges' model ultimately presupposes a unified view. Recall again the DTMD2011 challenge:

to discuss and expand our collective understanding of what we mean by information in our different disciplines.

So the purpose here on W2tQ and through h2cm is to focus on all the domains simultaneously; at least when information in the context of health is our concern. As I mentioned in my presentation, there are clear exceptions in emergency and crisis situations. Then 'holism' is suspended. Information (re)sources, selection, analysis, synthesis and salience are focussed; specialised individual, team and organisational memory are brought into play with varying degrees of technology in support. The second-by-second, minute-by-minute demand for data, information and knowledge increases, its longevity in terms of significance may decrease, replaced by updated values by turn until 'stability' is restored: by human effort or nature.

To be sustainable (applicable, creditable, relevant ...) for me a unified theory of (health) information must span situations such as the emergency and all the h2cm domains and care contexts. Now that is a challenge!

*What would it mean to create four ontologies that could be merged together?