Lewis | Russell |
Norris |
Previously: 'sport'
See also: https://www.formula1.com/
Hello Peter Jones,
Warm greetings from the Tanzania Health Summit (THS).
As we prepare for the 13th Tanzania Health Summit, scheduled for 5th–7th October 2026 at Mlimani City Conference Center, Dar es Salaam, we are excited to share key opportunities and updates for your participation.
We invite researchers, innovators, and professionals to submit abstracts aligned with this year’s theme:
This is your opportunity to showcase impactful work and contribute to national and global health conversations.
Elizabeth & her Colleagues story about their wish to present at THS:
Secure your spot at a discounted rate by registering early. Take advantage of this limited-time offer and be part of Tanzania’s largest healthcare gathering.
My source: Email - THS
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| Healing grid by Ryota Kanai |
Hodges' model is surely a clear winner 'healing grid'? Acting not only in healing, but in recovery, rehabilitation, reablement, palliative, illness and well-being too.
Quite a grid all-in-all (which also fascinate grandchildren).
My source:
Great to see this on X. This is something I created during my PhD time 20 years ago. https://t.co/7mpU0D1tW5
— Ryota Kanai (@kanair) April 10, 2026
Previously: 'grids' : 'perception' : 'vision' : 'lines' : 'geometry'
#ArtemisSafeReturn #PrecisionGridManoeuvres
On Nov 3rd & 4th last year, I was able to attend a launch event in Liverpool, UK - which I intended to post:
KantianDESERT* is designed to formulate a new model of distributive justice in response to growing economic disparities globally, by offering a distinctive position within dominant egalitarianisms in current political theory/philosophy. Through several original contributions, the project builds an innovative case for a theory sensitive to individual just deserts.
This 5-year, €2 million Advanced Research Project, selected by the European Research Council and funded by the UK Research and Innovation, is led by Professor Sorin Baiasu (Liverpool). With this conference, the project will be officially launched.
Chapter 3 on Desert Graphs - seemed somehow familar, at least in the structures first presented:
Abstract
This chapter is concerned with desert graphs, which help clarify and demonstrate the complexity of the topic of desert. The first section includes graphs that explain the fault forfeits first view and its two extensions. It then studies varying slopes, graphs that depict the desert line of two different individuals, and rotation. The next section discusses the concept of peak, which represents the exact level of suffering or happiness a person actually deserves. It also includes a comparison of the eastern and western slopes of one and two individuals, as well as a section on the Sym Mountain. This chapter also introduces the mountain as the characteristic shape of an individual desert line.
Kagan, Shelly, The Geometry of Desert (New York, 2012; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Jan. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199895595.001.0001, accessed 16 Mar. 2026.
The main launch programme is copied below for reference:
Day 1
9.00-9.15: Coffee/tea. Welcome addresses from Professor Peter Buse (Liverpool, Dean of the School of the Arts) and Professor Michael Hauskeller (Liverpool, Head of the Philosophy Department)
9:15-10:15 Introduction; about the project. Sorin Baiasu (Liverpool): Kantian Justice: A Desert-sensitive Responsibility-enhancing Theory; Tom Bunyard (Liverpool): 'Is Desert a Viable Concept?'; Tom Whyman (Liverpool): 'Food Justice and Desert'
10.20-11.20: Sebastian Orlander (Independent): ‘Kant, Freedom, Desert and Practical Faith’
...
11.30-12.30: Tommaso Mauri (Perugia): ‘Desert and Inequality in Kant: A Theologico-Political Approach’
...
1.15-2.15: Elisabeth Widmer (LSE): ‘What’s the point of Kantian Inequality?’
2.20-3.20: Huub Brouwer (Tillburg): ‘Defending Asymmetries of Desert’
...
3.30-4.30: Tom Mulligan (Georgetown): ‘Who deserves what AI produces?
4.35-5.20: Roundtable
7.00: conference dinner ...
Day 2
9:30-9.45: Welcome; coffee
9.45-10.45: Seniye Tilev (Kadir Has University): ‘Kant on Well-Being and Virtue: A Framework for Desert Without Consequentialism’
10.50-11.50: Krishna Pathak (Delhi): ‘Institutional Desert, Injustice, and Adaptive Preference for Suicide: A Kantian Perspective’
...
12:10-1.10: Jochen Bojanowski (Illionois): ‘Luck Egalitarianism and the Limits of Desert’
...
2.10-3.10: Gabriel Maruchi (Campinas): ‘Denotational Revisionism Cannot Escape Basic Desert’
3.15-4.15: Marius Baumann (LMU): ‘Desert, Responsibility and Skepticism’
..
4.30-5.15: Roundtable & close
Commentators: Tom Whyman (Liverpool), Sorin Baiasu (Liverpool), Bertjan Wolthuis (VU Amsterdam), Christian Españo (University of the Philippines Diliman), Sung-Yeop Jo (LMU), Tom Bunyard (Liverpool), Robin Eliath Joy (Calicut), Beşir Özgür Nayır (Boğaziçi).
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/research/research-projects/kantian-justice/
My source: *Philos-L https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/
Jones, P. (1996) Humans, Information, and Science, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(3),591-598.
Jones, P. (1996) An overarching theory of health communication? Health Informatics Journal,2,1,28-34.
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.
'Bill Ross (1964 – 2022) had interests ranging widely across contemporary philosophy and culture, with a particular interest in the relations between science and philosophy. As managing editor, he was the driving force behind Clinamen Press, which in the early 2000s published new works by contemporary philosophers, and English translation of important works by continental philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Gaston Bachelard and Michel Serres. He completed his PhD in philosophy at Staffordshire University, where he taught on the MA in the Philosophy of Nature, Information, and Technology. Bill had a lifelong passion for the connections between science and philosophy, on which he had published several important articles. Bill was working on a monograph on the philosophy and science of Deleuzian cosmology, which was has been posthumously published by Edinburgh University Press. This event is to celebrate Bill’s book and his life, and to allow his friends, his colleagues, and anyone interested in his work or the topics and issues addressed by his work to continue the conversation that Bill’s work inspires.'https://www.thebsp.org.uk/bill-ross-memorial-workshop-deleuzian-cosmologies/
On the publisher's site, the content listing is limited to the chapter (section) titles (as shared in iii).
There is also one review:
'In classical physics and its mechanical paradigm, events are stories about fundamental objects. In quantum physics, it is the objects that are the stories by which we understand physical systems in their most fundamental form--as histories of events. In Order and the Virtual, Bill Ross makes a compelling case that the event-ontological philosophies of Deleuze and Whitehead will become for the new physics what the philosophies of Newton and Locke were for the old.'
It is worth listing the content details in full:
Series Editor's Preface vii
Preface by Robin Durie and David Webb ix
Abbreviations xii
Chaos I
Chaos and Complexity Theory I
Nietzschean Chaos and the Superior Principle of Sufficient Reason 5
The Eternal Return and the Disparity of Forces 8
Ergodicity and Infinite Duration 10
Post-Classical Physics and the Question of Entropy 15
2. Entropy and the Complete Concept in Leibniz and Deleuze 24
Dissymmetry, Energy Gradients and the Ultimate Origination of Things 29
On the Ultimate Origination of Things 30
From Many Worlds to Chaosmos 34
The Calculating God 36
Mathematical Thought, the Problem and the Cosmos 38
The Compete Concept and Disjunctive Synthesis in Sufficient Reason 44
Physical Systems, Disparity and Disjunctive Synthesis 50
Chaosmos as Cosmology 56
Absolute Zero, Limits and the Infinite 60
Simple Order 68
3. Order 71
Mechanism and Vitalism, Order and Complexity 73
The Game Analogy #I: Leibniz and Kant 81
The Game Analogy #2: Claude Shannon and Michel Serres 83
Game #2.1: Claudo Shannon's 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication' 86
Game #2.2: Michel Serres The Birth of Physics 94
Game #3.0: Deleuze's Ideal Game 984. Order as Complexity 109
Complexity as Principle 122
Limits without Negation 127
5. Sufficient Reason as Dissymmetry and the Evolutionary Paradigm 131
Limits and Non-Locality 135
A Network Paradigm: Loop Quantum Gravity 150
A Holographic Paradigm: David Bohm's Implicate Order I54
Evolutionary Expansiveness 161
Conclusion 175
Notes 182
Bibliography 207
Index 217
I can see why my reading of OatV is not at the usual 21st century pace. 'Section 2. Entropy and the Complete Concept in Leibniz and Deleuze', pp.24-68, as already noted, is a real melange of ideas from several sources. As noted already, you have to unpick Deleuze, Simondon and Ross's guiding thought. your reading and purpose also matters however; an amazing gift of texts like this.
'CHAOSMOS AS COSMOLOGY
If energy gradients are the sufficient reason of all that appears for ther- modynamics, symmetry is to most intents and purposes the sufficient reason from which modern physics draws its rationale. Mathematical relations of symmetry have come to take the place of 'law` in classical physics: where there is symmetry, science identifies an underlying order, As we shall see, however the point of contention between Deleuze and the prevailing scientific consensus is by no means so black and white. and far from universally upheld among the scientific community. Once again, it is in the particularities of this tension that productive exchange may be found.' p.56.
'Each individual is in contact with, expresses, all individuals in the world, but obscurely, again, as with Leibniz, through infinitely ramifying lines of divergence.' p.54.
'Each individual, then, remains necessarily the sum of all its predicates, but in the same sense as a singularity contains its own power of expressing innumerable contradictions; here is Deleuze's 'object = x', the concept which overcomes the idea of world understood merely as a circle of convergence.' p.55.
We often speak in terms of 'take-aways'. Ross provides a packed (yet nutritious!) lunch and really useful snippets:
'Disjunction becomes a relation' (p.49).
Identity runs through section 2. Difficulties of orientation are noted. I wondered about a symbol for singularity, but I cannot find one(?). Ross, himself, describes as dense, Leibniz's essay on 'Origination'.
Is the nursing process, predicated up Aristotlean 'hylomorphism' (p.50)? To capture the (cognitive) orientation of an individual, do we locate the basis for the immanence of nursing, in problems that are potential, or actual?
Amongst, particle physics, absolute zero, a two-dimensional plane, and 'symmetry'; I found 'ill health'. At least, I did in a spontaneous pencilled note. And, nearby: 'Symmetry is Law'; (p.59)'.
There is grist-for-the-mill in producing new formulations for Hodges' model. Do 'non-commutative relationships, and vectorial transformations abound? (p.60)
Health and ill-health break symmetry (which Deleuze resists), and do so within and across all the domains of Hodges' model.
Ross quotes in Section 3 'Order', page 73 in Bergson's Creative Evolution (236): '[The mechanistic order] may be defined as geometry which is its extreme limit; more generally, it is that kind of order that is concerned, whenever a relation of necessary determination is found between causes and effects'. I could go on ... but scribbled 'cogeography/cogeographical'.
Many thanks to Edinburgh University Press for my review copy.
Over time I have equated the center of Hodges' model with a nexus. Framing the whole model as a chaotic system, comprised of four domains, with two (or more?) Lorenz attractors, how do we make sense of what is going on?
A previous post visited this too: Threshold Concepts: Reflection on chaos, complexity and AI
Reading Order and the Virtual the new vocabulary, provides glimpses. The perspectives I'm adopting are no doubt naive and favour my context. If we freeze the situation from the center - the nexus the variables, parameters are frozen within their respective domains and tracks around the attractors. They tell us little (now), for obvious reasons, but (with AI and) acknowledging the social and political is a huge step forward (in healthcare).
'The word 'appetition' occurs not infrequently in Whitehead's work, though his own coining is 'prehension`. Both words convey essentially the same import. All individuals 'prehend' all others - the entire universe is expressed through the relations pertaining to any given individual therein.36 Prehension belongs cqually to the event as to the conscious decision. The 'nexus' or 'actual occasion' is the outcome of prior appetitive or prehensive enfolding for Whitehead as it is for Leibniz, and the aggregate of past prehensions shapes the future of the individual. The crucial refinement comes with the term 'negative prehension'.
For Whitehead, accepting those same tenets that characterise Leibniz's metaphysics, the interconnection of all things and the tendency of systems to enfold elements from their total situation, negative prehension is a necessary corollary to positive appetition. It belongs to the 'principle of limitation' which Whitehead saw as a necessary supplement to Spinozist metaphysics, and which we shall encounter in some detail in following chapters.'
It helps me, that Spinoza is heard here.
'Instead of how is it that all things are interconnected, the question becomes, "Given that all things are interconnected, how is it that individuation is possible?'
Before recourse to Lorenz's butterflies, I saw 'oscillations', a constant swing from individual to other(s); then back again.
`Every present state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future',37 (all p.47.)While concerning a 'simple substance', is this a prelude to self-care and preventive health care?
I noted in pencil: In Hodges' model 'nexus' is framed as the now - that just was. Ross carries on to discuss 'the multiplicity of components in the nexus can enter explicit feeling as contrasts.' p.48.
Yes. 'The local and global are entwined' p.49; and now with the glocal too. Ross points out how Deleuze draws upon Simondon's treatment of the organic and inorganic within the same framework, p.50.
I've also been reminded about resolving some abbreviations:
https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2025/07/axiomatic-simondon.html
Many thanks to Edinburgh University Press for my review copy.
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:
'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 ...
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:
'The necessity in question is the necessary inclusion of all predicates pertaining to an individual in the complete concept of that individual.' p.24.
There are several 'completes' to be unwound, and so better understood. Ross provides a key. This isn't a book to read and pass-on to a student, second-hand bookshop. It really deserves re-reading, mandatory here - to get hold of the ideas and interplay of Deleuze, Ross's understanding and it must be said interpretation, that also calls upon Dan Smith's Essays on Deleuze, (EUP) and directly Leibniz's work.
'The complete concept idea of predication is furnished to map faithfully onto these principles concerning the nature of things.' p.26.
'Lastly, while mathematical concepts are frequently adopted to illuminate Deleuze's argument, they should not be taken as metaphorically representative of processes in the world; this would be to ignore the broadside and extended attack on representation as a mode of thinking as such which occupies so much of Difference and Repetition. Rather, they serve as a particularly direct example of the differential processes to which all phenomena - natural, social, psychological are subject. In an unambiguous sense, it is eminently possible for problems prompting a mathematical response to express themselves in altogether different domains - natural, social, etc. The problem is, so to speak, a common root of all domains.' p.39.
Still grappling, I noted integration, actualization, parity of esteem, maths - the linear and non-linear. It seems Deleuze was challenged by the question of integration. Leibniz's contribution of the calculus is acknowledged. History and even the present remain preoccupied with finding boxes. Ross explains how for Deleuze, we should not discount turbulent phenomena that cannot be simply integrated, written off as random disorder.
If we associate complication, with implication and explication, do we invite two-fold (as a minimal - keyhole) 'surgery': (re-)constructive and destructive? Thank you Mr Ross. I see now, how the (infinity →) continuum will not be exhausted. Exploring axioms for Hodges' model, and what is axiomatic, I must check Albert Lautman's model of dynamic structuration, especially when set (against / with?) the problematic mode:
'The two modes relate to each other dialectically - a period of exploration followed by the resulting period of axiomatisation. Deleuze recognises both modes and their respective utility, but for his philosophy the problematic mode is by far the more important.' p.41.
Do our boxes still have a purpose? To tame the situation - at hand/mind/virtual?
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
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.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'
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.
Strogatz, S.H. (2015) Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Application to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering. 2nd 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
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| 'ORDER and the VIRTUAL' |
'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'
my childhood - memories |  |
my family, community, home, role models, friends from the neibourhood | Why? |
Forget the Golden Ratio ... |
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| ... | it's time to get real ... |
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| Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History, |
"The Renaissance friar Fra Luca Pacioli singled out one of Euclid's irrational ratios - the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio - and proclaimed that it was a metaphor for the Almighty because divine nature is irrational in the sense of being beyond the understanding of rational mortals. Thus Pacioli associated Euclid's ratio with theology. But neither Pacioli nor the ancients associated the ratio with art or beauty.
That association was not made until the early 1800s, when German mathematicians first referred to Euclid's division (sectioning) of the line as "golden"; adopted from them and popularized by Adolf Zeising's New System of Human Proportions (1854), the term became central to the (false) historical claim that ancient, medieval, and Renaissance artists and architects had used the ratio to determine ideal proportions." p.73.
Gamwell (2016).
Here are the reflections on the photograph posted in June following the Conference on Threshold Concepts:
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| http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kjerland/Lorenz/lorenz_attractor.html |
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Identity (use of name, touch ...)
(My) PURPOSE
Beliefs, Personal values
Safety (personal) Thresholds
Trigger warning
Critical - critique
not taking it personally
| PROCESS [Space] - physical & degrees of freedom in decision making constraints Rationale* Evidence Theory Quantitative Research | |
| Qualitative Research Patient : Healthcare practitioner decision making PRACTICE Critical - agreeing to disagree
Schism - 'distance'
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Consensus (bridge building)
Autonomy (in decision making)
Professionalism Anti- 'X' movements Riot and anarchy safety (POLICY) Critical - political |
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| Brian E. Hodges - c/o Brian's family. |
Born in Liverpool, UK.
Community Mental Health Nurse NHS, Part-time Lecturer,
Researcher Nursing & Technology Enhanced Learning
Registered Nurse - Mental Health & General
Community Psychiatric Nursing (Cert.) MMU
PG Cert. Ed.
BA(Joint Hons.) Computing and Philosophy - BIHE - Bolton
PG(Dip.) Collaboration on Psychosocial Education [COPE] Univ. Man.
MRES. e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, Lancaster Univ.
Live and work in NW England - seeking a global perspective.
The views expressed on W2tQ are entirely my own, unless stated otherwise.
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If you would like to get in touch please e-mail me at
h2cmng AT yahoo.co.uk
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
