Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy

by Manuel DeLanda

Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy cuts to the heart of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and of todayÆs science wars.At the start of the 21st Century, Deleuze is now regarded as the most radical and influential of contemporary philosophers. Yet his work is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. Here Manuel DeLanda does what the growing host of Deleuzians have failed to do-he makes sense of Deleuze for both analytic and continental thought, for both science and philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Theory, Nonfiction, Mathematics, Art

252 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Manuel DeLanda (b. in Mexico City, 1952), based in New York since 1975, is a philosopher, media artist, programmer and software designer. After studying art in the 1970s, he became known as an independent filmmaker making underground 8mm and 16mm films inspired by critical theory and philosophy. In the 1980s, Manuel De Landa focused on programing, writing computer software, and computer art. After being introduced to the work of Gilles Deleuze, he saw new creative potential in philosophical texts, becoming one of the representatives of the 'new materialism'.

Reviews

[homoness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually, I don't pen reviews, but since this book, which I consider to be important in the field of Deleuze studies, hasn't received any actual criticism but has had been discussed as an important artefact in the question of whether or not Deleuze (and Guattari) ought to be exonerated of the most heinous crime of employing a vocabulary that draws on a wide range of sources, among them (how dare they!) also STEM, I will say a few words about the book itself, in order to facilitate lecture of this book for those, who yet wish/have to read it.

The book consists out of four parts (save the short introduction); four chapters and an appendix. The four parts are as follows:

1. An explanation of Deuleuze's usage of mathematics (chapter 1);
2. Deleuze's ontology (chapter 2 to 3);
3. Deleuze's epistemology (chapter 4);
4. A general clarification of Deleuzian thought and three of his major works, authored with Guattari (Capitalism and Schizophrenia I and II and What is Philosophy).

As many people know these days, DeLanda considers Deleuze to be a realist. DeLanda takes a paramount interest in ontology and relegates epistemology to just one chapter, which reflects DeLanda's Deleuzian outlook.

Other than engaging in this, in my mind facile, discussion of realism vs. idealism, DeLanda discusses the concept of multiplicity at length. This is done primarily in the first chapter, where DeLanda shows how decidedly mathematical Deleuze's conception of subjectivity is. This is both worthwile and demanding; I'd highly recommend it. A multiplicity, the author says, is: "a nested set of vector fields related to each other by symmetry-breaking bifurcations, together with the distributions of attractors which define each of its embedded levels." (DeLanda 2013: 23p)

In the second chapter, DeLanda continues his elaboration of Deleuze's ontology. Here DeLanda fleshes out his infamous flat ontology, which is made "exclusively of unique, singular individuals, differeing in spatio-temporal scale but not in ontological status" (DeLanda 2013: 51). Such an ontology leaves no room for reified totalities (e.g. society) (DeLanda 2013: 147). Rather, an ontology of the actual, virtual and intensity, constitute the explicity non-essentialist "nature" of being.

In the appendix, DeLanda wraps things up, and produces an ontological list, which names ten decisive aspects of Deleuze's ontology.


Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would, if one is interested in Deleuze and wishes to go beyond the usual prattling about how diversity is really important and how difference is everything and how one ought to be rhizomatic etc. I am still unsure about the idea of a flat ontology, and its implications. Latour does "flat ontology" rather well, and so does Garcia, but looking at Harman, I am not entirely convinced this is the right way. Markus Gabriel, a new "Elend der Philosophie" (povery of philosophy) is a good example of what might happen if one pursues this line: an insensuate resurrection of old categories such as sense/meaning ("Sinn" in the original German) and a very simple ontology which allows everything to be that somehow is evoked: linguistically, performatively, medially etc.

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

141217: this is a great reading of deleuze, unique, literate, scientific, all in explication of concepts and specific terminology. ‘intensive science’ is reading of new ways, to generate lines of flight, to create concepts, on the plane of immanence (if you understand that maybe the book says nothing new), but such is the potential of using the virtual. de landa here suggests deleuze is offering new metaphysics specifically for modern science, including disciplines not previously approached by continental philosophy...

d (deleuze) tracks the development of natural sciences through western civilization from original embedding of Greek philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle, the great ontological real necessary for science, first in the realm of transcendent ideals (essences) then immanent identity (typology), which works for a while but now must be seen against 'inexhaustible' possibility of virtual philosophy. this book investigates virtual in space, virtual in time, virtual in physics. granted, my knowledge of such is very limited amateur, but the work is fascinating, however it might annoy professionals in these fields...

d argues against this ideological distinction of any 'essences', showing that rather than inherent or immanent these are approximations, homogenous, deciding which 'problems' to 'solve' according to possibility of 'answers', where d is more interested in formulating the right questions/problems... though this has a lot to do with math and i am not very up even on memories of math. it seems d thinks of his work as empirical and realist and argues that this is the way to create, produce, determine, an ontology that furthers the scientific project. he argues that sciences offer 'probabilities' rather than 'laws', he argues that 'science' is no more a real 'totality' than any abstraction (then d talks about 'science' in virtual vs art, philosophy..) such as 'country', 'class'...

d believes that there is an inverse relationship between accuracy and homogeneity of 'metric', that is 'measured' knowledge of any scientific concept, that the more 'identity' (difference) the less clear role (repetition)... or something like that... no matter what choices, disciplines, sub genre, particularly in math, are home to scientific 'laws'...

d is maybe hard to read, fun for me anyway, and de landa adds a useful sort of 'glossary' of terms as they are used/defined in d's various texts, which i had mistakenly thought were separate concepts, are actually slightly different emphasis of same concepts... i have been absorbed in learning more about the 'virtual' and while this project is ongoing, this book may not have answered but has helped pose the questions better, and at least i feel i am headed in the right direction... then again, maybe i am just confused on a higher 'plane'...
Deleuze
Nietzsche and Philosophy
What Is Philosophy?
Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts
Bergsonism
Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual
Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception
Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy
Deleuze on Cinema

[Wayne Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delanda explicates Deleuze's philosophy of multiplicity well in the first three chapters as it relates to science, except for Chapter 2 where he says "These would be in a nutshell, the three ontological dimensions which constitute the Deluzian world: the virtual, the intensive and the actual." (p. 55) As no Deleuzian would ever make such a claim, we can clearly see here Delanda's imposed metaphysics. And he clearly rejects Deleuze's philosophy as applied to the socio-linguistic domain in Chapter 4:
Deleuze Lite: Chapter 4, Virtuality and the Laws of Physics
Delanda reconstructs Deleuze for a scientific audience, but then bifurcates virtual science from virtual philosophy according to his proclaimed “flat ontology of individuals” (well defined as non-hierachical by Delanda), but which ontologically flattens a fully Deleuzian intensive philosophy of multiplicity which includes socio-linguistic aspects of reality. After taking us through three masterful chapters of Deleuzian philosophy applied to science, Delanda declares at the beginning of Chapter Four: “There is no room for reified totalities . . . no room for entities like ‘society’ or ‘culture.’ " (Delanda 2002: 147) In so doing he decapitates Deleuze and Guattari’s (D&G) sociological critique of the historically reified totalities of both Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxian economics. He also denies the alloplastic richness of Anti-Oedipus (AO) and A Thousand Plateaus (ATP).

How does Delanda’s cogent expositon of Deleuze’s multiplicity in the scientific world so completely reject the multiplicity of Deluze’s philosophical project? We have a clue where Delanda states: (1) “Unlike spatio-temporal dynamisms, the terms “passive self” and “larval subject” received very little elaboration in my reconstruction, mostly because I wanted to keep the description of Deleuze’s ontology free from anthropocentrism as possible.“ (p. 202) Delanda here is reacting to the potentially anthropocentic philosophy in Difference and Repetition (D&R) and completely rejects the more comprehensive philosophy of multiplicity of ATP.

Delanda is understandably concerned about the anthropological emphasis in Deleuze’s three syntheses of time in Difference and Repetition, which also has a parallel in the three syntheses of space. The Deleuzian cogito requires that the “I that thinks” be placed in time as the passive “I.” Deleuze rejects the Kantian cogito which grounds determinability not only in time but in thinking, which is secondary and illusory. “Time signifies a fault or a fracture in the I and a passivity in the self; and the correlation between the passive self and the fractured I constitutes the discovery of the transcendental or the element of the [true] Copernican revolution. “ (Deleuze 1980: 86) Deleluze exposes the ‘I’ that is fractured based on the passive receptivity of the self, rather than covering it up as does Kant with the synthetic apriori activity of the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA).

Deleuze now searches for the condition of this wider existence—what makes the undetermined ground (the fractured I, the passive self) of a well-determined given (time) determinable. There is a dialectic (interplay) between the condition (of a passive self with sensations and concepts) and the given (objects in time) which Kant tries to cut off by appeal to the pure apriori given, which are thereby separated from concepts and sensations. Deleuze includes sensations and concepts in his cogito for which he must find the necessary conditions for particular sensations or concepts which is the basis for his third synthesis of time where the ‘I’ dissolves in the virtual (failure of the third synthesis).

Delanda identifies his fundamental divide with Deleuze: “The term ‘intensive’ which in my presentation was used in relation to individuation processes, not the virtual continuum,” (p. 199) This philosophical divide for Delanda requires a reconstruction in order to eliminate the confusion between the intensive virtual and his falsely individuated actual which thereby ‘flattens’ his ontology in comparison to Deleuze. Therefore all references to the individual are flattened by this exclusion of the virtual, of intensities, and lacks a robust philosophy of multiplicity.

As we have seen above Delanda does well to identify the problematic of the anthropocentric concept of time. However, he goes on to say, “Unlike my reconstruction where the term ‘individual’ refers to the final product (organisms, species, etc.), in Deleuze’s work it refers to the larval subject themselves. It often has the meaning of a Leibnizian ‘monad.’ (Delanda 2002: 202) Delanda refers to Deleuze’s robust larval selves as a Leibnizian monad which Delanda calls an ‘intensive individual’ in contrast to the Delanda cogito of the ’individual.’ Delanda defines the ‘individual’ as “without qualification to refer to the extended and qualified actual entities which form my flat ontology of individuals.” (Delanda 2002: 203)

Then, under a section entitled “Extensities and qualities,” Delanda says “These are the two characteristics which define the realm of the actual, the fully constituted world of extended and qualified individuals.” Contradicting this focus on the actual he says, “In ATP these two characteristics are referred to as ‘substances’ and ‘forms’ respectively . . . Given that no actual substance is every purely extensional, these two characteristics are ‘not really distinct. They are the abstract components of every articulation.’ ” (Delanda 2002: 203; Deleuze 1980: 502)

Consequently, Delanda opens the final chapter as stated above with his strong claim of a “flat ontology of individuals” where he has “no room for reified totalities” but only for “concrete social individuals” with the same ontological status as human individuals, simply operating at larger spatio-temporal scales, “products of concrete historical processes” and operating as “parts to a whole (sic).” Where there are cases of homogeneity to suggest the existence of a single ‘culture’ or ‘society,’ one must not “postulate such totalities,” but must be “given a concrete historical explanation.” (Delanda 2002: 147)

Delanda thus becomes reductionistic of not only individuals, and society, but also of science by cutting off the second articulation of expression, of the virtual and of philosophy itself. In his attempt to avoid false totalization, he states that science is a ‘scientific field,’ “like any other individual” which “will depend on contingent historical facts such as its degree of internal homogeneity and its degree of isolation from other fields.” (Delanda 2002: 148). Delanda thus additionally reifies history while conflating under the category of ‘individual,’ the alloplastic of human individuals, social individuals, and culture. It was precisely Deleuze’s project to provide a more comprehensive integration of the physical, organic and social in ATP and to bridge this gap of Delanda’s flatened ontology.

Delanda goes on to state, “The ontology I have developed in this book is fully historical. Each of the individuals which populates this other world is a product of a definite historical process of individuation and, to the extent that an individual’s identity is defined by its emergent properties and that these properties depend on the continuing causal interactions among an individual’s parts, each individual is itself a historical causal process.” (Delanda 2002: 183-4) Delanda gets very Cartesian in his use of the historical, bifurcating the actual from the virtual.

Moreover, in the introduction (Delanda 2002: xv) Delanda tells us that in Chapter Four he is actually trying to “eliminate the erroneous assumption of a closed world . . . [and] devalue the very idea of truth.” But then he again confabulates his ‘problematic epistemology’ by capturing “an objective distribution of the important and the unimportant, or more mathematically, of the singular and the ordinary . . . an objectivity of physical knowledge, an objectivity now captured by distributions of the singular and the ordinary.” (Delanda 2002: xv) Delanda grants that “there is much more to Deleuze’s books than just an ontology of processes and an epistemology of problem,” and that “there is a certain violence which Deleuze’s texts must endure in order to be reconstructed for an audience they were not intended for.” “A different kind of violence is involved in wrenching his ideas from his collaboration with Felix Guattari,” stating that he intentionally goes back to Deleuze’s early texts such as D&R for his ontology.

Delanda also completely eliminates Deleuze’s use of content and expression, which combined with form and substance to define the full ontology of double articulation in ATP, rather than Delanda’s articulation which he also flatly carries into “A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.” Deleuzes’s ontology in ATP is that each movement of a strata of reality consists of the first articulation (movement), of both physical conjunction and symbolization (coding), of both substance and form, both parts (segmentarity) and multiplicity, the first more quantal intensity and merely ordered, the second more rigid, atomic and organised. Unfortunately Delanda comes nowhere near this capacity for the philosophy, although he does for science as multiplicity what he refused to do for philosophy

Delanda says “Every stratum needs a double articulation, a double play of substances and forms, of extensities and qualities, one at the level of molecular populations and another at the level of molar aggregates:” (Delanda 2002: 206)

D&G say: “The first articulation chooses or deducts, from unstable particle-flows, metastable molecular or quasi-molecular units (substances) upon which it imposes a statistical order of connections and successions (forms). The second articulation establishes functional, compact, stable structures (forms), and constructs the molar compounds in which structures are simultaneously actualised (substances).” (Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 40-1)

Content is formed matter consisting of 1) substance as chosen matter and 2) form as matter chosen in a certain order: a) substance itself and b) form of content of matter. Expression is about how structures function as 1) organization of their own specific form and 2) substances as they form compounds: 1) form as organization and 2) content of expression of compounds. (Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 43)
There is an alloplastic grouping of strata (rather than autoplastic that only makes changes within) which make modifications in the external world through a new distribution of content and expression. Alloplastic layers work with linguistic rather than genetic forms of expression, including symbols that are comprehensible, transmittable and modifiable from outside. This is the layer of a new distribution of properties, the human: technology and language, tool and symbol, ‘gesture and speech.’(Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 60)

The organization of content and expression consists of both technological content and semiotic (symbolic) expression. Content and expression both contain existing aspects of hand/tools and face/language as well as preexistant formations. Content is not simply hand and tools, but a technical social process preexisting them as “states of force or formations of power.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 63) Language Expression is not merely a face or a language, but a “semiotic collective process that preexsts them and constitutes regimes of signs.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 63). Therefore a formation of power is much greater than a tool, and a regime of signs is much more than a language—they are determining and selective agents—as much in the constitution of languages and tools as in their usages or diffusions.

Unfortunately Delanda could not stay philosophically consistent with his own observation: “The Deluzian ontology . . . [is] a universe of becoming without being . . . where individual beings do exist but only as the outcome of becomings. “ (Delanda 2002: 99) Double articulation is therefore not merely an integration/individuation of the virtual and the actual, but also of substance and form, expression and content.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manuel de Landa is one of my favorite authors. He takes the work of Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari) and translates it into something timely and practical. The contents of this book are nothing less than profound. If the value of D&G's books lay in what you could do with them, then de Landa is the one who has actually done something spectacular with them. I'm not a philosopher or an expert in communications theory, so I can't comment on the scholarliness of the work. However there is something extremely important here for scientists: a view of the world based on complex dynamics & spaces of possibilities, rather than fixed linear algebraic rules of nature. It's also written very clearly, so that unlike the works of Deleuze, one does not need a background in philosophy or infinite patience to decode what's being said. Honestly, I wish that every practitioner of science would read it. And every intelligent lay person, too.

[Gracchus Babeuf · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first chapter of this book is mandatory reading for understanding the mathematical concepts Deleuze uses.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremadamente complejo, pero DeLanda intenta hacerse entender. No sé lo suficiente sobre ciencia contemporánea ni sobre Deleuze para entender todo lo que dice, pero me parece muy interesante para comparar y contrastar con abordajes como el de Badiou o el de Meillassoux.

[Alex Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delanda presents a fairly erudite examination of Deleuze's virtual philosophy. Here, Delanda shies away from using much of Deleuze and Guattari's imaginative language, seeking to verify it instead using mathematics and science. While this intensely interesting, Delanda does some less versed readers of Deleuze and Guattari a service by approaching the subject matter tangentially. In a way, Delanda actually violates some of Deleuzes aesthetics with this explanation by presenting a set view of philosophy and science as though there was a singular procedure by which Deleuze and Guattari sought to illustrate.

Nonetheless, Delanda does an excellent job approaching Deleuze and Guattari's work and connecting it to some more recent phenomenon within science and mathematics. To some degree this can be thought of as just one aspect of Deleuze and Guattari, but it is one which readers of Deleuze and Guattari often miss because the methodology of their examination is so different form the analytic "pragmatism" with which science and math are often presented. To some degree, Delanda could have grounded his discussion more with Deleuze's work, although he left this at the appendix which provides some trace yes, but also obscures the presentation to some degree.

I don't have much to remark on in terms of content, as Delanda provides a very interesting examination. My critique is centered more on the projection Delanda gives. On the one hand, this appears to be an exploration of Deleuze, to supplement his work. In fact the appendix suggests this. And yet, this work could be an exploration on its own, one that would create its own grasp. To that end, Delanda straddles both sides, by not re-examining Deleuze and providing an entry point within Deleuze's work as the opening for this book. To some degree, Delanda chooses to ignore the philosophical growth that Deleuze exhibited, treating Deleuze as one long consistency. If this book were to supplement some of Deleuze's conceptions (such as the virtual) Delanda should have focused more on this aspect of Deleuze's diachronistic changes. It seems instead that Delanda has trouble focusing on how to incorporate Deleuze into this book, seeking instead of meld his book into Deleuze's work as a supplement in some unclear manner.

Still I did find this book well worth reading. Delanda presents some interesting concepts on his own, but he doesn't provide much of a frame for this concept except as a kind of supplement for Deleuze as a whole. I believe this totalization misses the point of Deleuze and Guattari's work. For me this undermines Delanda's book. Delanda does a great job of diving in, but he could have better deployed his own book. Instead, it just kind of floats off to the side.

[Eric Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am a simple man, and I prefer my philosophy straightforward and Anglo-Saxon. With its bewildering array of terminology, this exhibits the worst excesses of Continental philosophy, intended more to obfuscate than to elucidate. The basic programme of the book, to provide a replacement for essentialism, seems to be solving a problem which isn't, and the proposed solution is neither clear nor convincing.

I found de Landa's habit of cherry-picking examples from other disciplines to be particularly annoying: disingenuous at best, misleading at worst. I wonder if an embryologist or a physicist or a mathematician would feel that de Landa had accurately represented the work in their discipline, or whether he is just throwing out examples in an attempt to add some credibility to his specious argumentation.

If metaphysics is nonsense, then this is as nonsensical as it gets.

[Kane Faucher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather than going back to worship at the temple of Deleuze, DeLanda's polymathic interdisciplinary approach pushes well beyond the comfort zones of orthodox Deleuzianism (although I recognize the oxymoron of "orthodox" and "Deleuze!).

[Richard Smyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book, which helped me understand the quite difficult philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari. Delanda draws from a variety of scientific and mathematical fields in the process of explaining their work.

[Al Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

More thesis avoidance; this is actually a useful book about vectors, and why math is interesting just to think about.

Subtitle: Songs of Mathematical Innocence, and Inexperience

[H · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good and smart and whatever but I still think a realist reading of deleuze is the most buzzkilly thing ever

[MykÆ G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shines and fades in proportion to De Landa's ability to make comprehensible the many scientific and mathematical theories that he purports to be Deleuze's influences.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

very fun mathematics for art majors

[Karim Kadry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible
Life Changing

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good explication of Deleuze’s thoughts.

[Henrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

1st and 4th chapters are really good even if the ride in between is a bit bumpy

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I still don't trust Deleuze or his diehard followers, this book did give me more respect for his work.

In Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, DeLanda tries to bring Deleuze's ontology into dialogue with modern mathematics and science. Not that Deleuze didn't know about modern developments. Rather, DeLanda tries to make Deleuze's brief and cryptic references to the sciences and mathematics understandable. Throughout, DeLanda argues that the essences and universals of traditional ontology arise out of historical and intensive processes.

In the first two chapters, DeLanda examines Deleuze's idea of 'multiplicities'. Roughly, multiplicities act through the attractions singularities exert. No actual objects are singularities; rather, singularities are non-actual attractors which direct and form possible trajectories or paths which are then, depending on such circumstances, occasionally actualized. They are the asymptotes that phenomena (running along trajectories or paths) approach but never realize: "the trajectories . . . always approach an attractor asymptotically, that is, they approach it indefinitely close but never reach it" (23). Such multiplicities of singularities are real insofar as they can be studied and have effects, but they are not actual because they are never fulfilled by actual phenomena; hence, as DeLanda explains, multiplicities are virtual.

By resorting to virtual multiplicities, DeLanda (through Deleuze) tries to interpret the spacial-qualitative world we are familiar with as being fundamentally produced through the interactions between topological intensities and attractors. Just as projective transformations reduce differences between objects ("in projective geometry all conic sections, without further qualification, are the same" (17)), space (extension) and qualities are ultimately derived from intensive quantities. Space and quality, which have been so fundamental to the study of essences, actually conceal their intensive origins: "once a process of individuation is completed, the intensive factors which defined this process disappear or become hidden underneath the extensive and qualitative properties of the final product" (62).

In the third chapter, DeLanda turns to Deleuze's theory of time. Here, he claims that time arises out of the relations obtaining between different processes, the speeds of which depend on how they perceive and are perceived (the movement of glass as compared to liquid glass (105)). As DeLanda explains, "[a] process may change too slowly or too fast in relation to another process, the relationship between their temporal scales determining in part their respective capacities to affect one another" (110). Moreover, since all entities in the world perceive - everything interacts both actively and passively with everything else (an entities is not fully understood until we know how it interacts with other entities) - all entities have their own unique time. Time, therefore, is not absolute but produced through perception or interaction between contrasting and embedded processes.

In the final chapter, DeLanda seems to criticize two views of science: on the one hand, he criticizes the pre-20th century and now antiquated view according to which scientific laws are universals that govern all operations. The problem with this position is that it falls into the same trap as essentialism. That is, it does not believe that laws have histories and can be produced and overcome. On the other hand, DeLanda criticizes those who deny the reality of laws, believing them to be 'useful fictions'. By contrast, DeLanda, following Deleuze, argues that physical and biological 'laws' are real but produced; they are subject to change as these same entities continue to interact and affect each other.

That's all.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had previously read and adored both A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History and Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason, but I was reluctant to read Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel De Landa's attempt to extend and present the work of Gilles Deleuze to physical scientists with an interest in philosophy. While I'm right in the target demographic (by interest and history, if not current profession), I think of Deleuze as a canonical example of the deliberately incomprehensible French philosopher trope and that was enough to push me away. Props to Ribbonfarm, for convincing me to give it a go.

I'm still fuzzy on parts of the book (De Landa does quote Deleuze liberally, after all), but what I have absorbed has resonated deeply with my scientific and philosophical intuitions. In De Landa's version of Deleuzian metaphysics, entities in the world are classified according to the process that form them, not according to some imagined ideal model they resemble. The most accessible example is the evolutionary view of species, where the shared history of reproductive isolation and gradual pressure make two animals members of the same class, not the shared traits that cause them to superficially resemble each other. The resemblance is viewed as the consequence of the process, rather than being primary, and thus variation among specimens is expected rather than surprising.

The Deleuze/De Landa model (I don't properly know who to attribute it to, since I haven't read Deleuze and can't be sure how faithful De Landa represents him) applies in other contexts, even in my professional life as a software developer. When debugging, I forget at my peril that the source code is not the software, but that each instance of the application acquires variation through exposure to its environment.

This was one of the most challenging books I've read in a long time. Some prior background with nonlinear dynamics (Chaos: The Making of a New Science would be a good start) goes a long way, but even with that, I found the middle two chapters rough going. If any of those sounds interesting, I would recommend starting with A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. It explores similar themes, but much more concretely.

[Lukáš · Rating 4 out of 5]

On many accounts, this is a lovable and welcome book. Since deLanda is indisputably the most influential interpreter of Deleuze's work in North America, it's hard not to esteem the work done on clarifying the concepts from the sciences (physics, biology) and mathematics Deleuze has been using throughout his career. Also, to someone coming more from a political theory / philosophy background than science, it's refreshing to see how these references clash with a, say, more "philosophical" reading of those ideas. In this sense, the book is invaluable and elegant. Also, contrary to some other North American theorists working with DeLanda as if his work was perhaps some kind of contract, I admire the humble tone that's trying to clearly maintain a distance between the matters encountered in this book and the more political/aesthetic/ethical dimensions of Deleuze's philosophy. All this makes especially the first three chapters absolutely essential.
Now, this is arguably the only weakness of this book - is it possible to maintain such a distance at all, and isolate - in a somewhat more analytical fashion - such an ontology from a more, uhm, 'continental' sense of the term, e.g. ontology as the intersection of the real and the possible in relation to subjectivity? (Even despite focusing on the register of virtuality partly covers this issue.) Moreover, what popped out in my mind was how the idea of 'intensity' provides an important ontological register, Deleuze himself admitted he got the idea from Pierre Klossowski's work on Nietzsche - isn't there a little more, given the book's zero references to Nietzsche and other of Deleuze's important influences?
Last, the formalism of the last chapter felt to me a little off, given a re-connection of the problems and demands such a mammoth philosophy poses with scientific methods is to me a thing that should be probably left to scientists. As well as the Deleuze register which seems to over-impose deLanda's reading on Deleuze's terms, but as we're talking deLanda's interpretation, it's a side issue, i.e. an ontology on its own (take it or leave it). The rating (per chapters) would be 5-5-5-2, making it a 4/5.

[John Tessitore · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a persistent and hard-working reader, this book unrolls itself like a red carpet. In the philosophy of Deleuze, Manuel DeLanda locates the starting point for a reassessment of Western philosophy in the wake of modern scientific discovery. DeLanda then sets out to adjust the conversation. In DeLanda's account, the bedrock philosophical idea of essence--the fixity of identity, the stability of options, the predictability of cause and effect, the availability of solutions--is the victim of higher mathematics, quantum mechanics, chaos theory. But DeLanda does not end with negation. Like Deleuze, DeLanda ends with possibility. By widening or narrowing our usual focus to accommodate new discoveries and new theories, he shows us a world without essence, a world that might have been very different and could still be very different from anything our senses have led us to expect.

[James K · Rating 4 out of 5]

What came first the Chicken or the Egg? Read this book and find out. A fascinating ontology of the Virtual. If you persevered through Difference and Repetition and liked what you read, then this book is for you. If not, it will be difficult especially if you are not familiar, at least conceptually, with abstract mathematics. DeLanda expands on the concepts of morphogenesis, intensities, complexity theory etc. He puts a fork in Essentialism as such, and carefully considers an alternative process of becoming. A process of Individuation driven by intensive differentiations, bifurcations and topological folding, stretching and bending. Fascinating!

[Jefferson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Delanda does a great job of synthesizing Deleuzes thoughts into a specific focus (I appreciate. I am not the intended audience (scientist), but i feel that i got a lot out this book anyway from his examples and connections he makes to other thinkers. The section on intensive time was particularly interesting. The appendix is also useful for enhancing your understanding of Deleuzes shifting terminology over several of his different books.
I can't say how confusing this book might be if you havent waded through at least some Deleuze, but i would say almost everyone should read this book.

[Thai Divone · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not a bad book, it is not one of those uniquely great books either. It is a nice little detour through some of Deleuze's ideas in the realms of ontology and epistemology aimed for analytical philosophers. In that, it highly succeeds. But for those, like me, who come from the continental tradition, this book has much less to offer. While I did get to understand a bit better how "classic" analytic philosophy works and theorizes, I can't say that I've got much food for thought from reading the book. Again, not a bad book – far from that, a nice little book – but nothing of a lasting impact.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is bit different from DeLanda's other works. He discusses in the opening to the book the difficulty of writing to a specific audience, in this case scientists, without losing other audiences. While the subject matter has more to do with approaches to science than any science in particular it feels at times too content-less. Perhaps this is where is differs most from 1,000 years of non-linear History, which maintained a good deal of grounding. The discussion of time and the interpretation of the laws of physics according to virtual philosophy are quite interesting.

[Kev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding companion piece to Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. In fact, indispensable. DeLanda's grasp of Post-Modern thought, Deleuze's thought in particular and command of gradient screen diffusion and nonequillibrium thermodynamics makes Deleuze's prescience palpable and thrilling. If you love science, math, relativity, biology, then you'll love this book. Caution. It's highly subtle and demands a comprehensive wide-ranging understanding of the principles discussed.

[Nicolás Rivas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fails in too many interpretations of non-linear and complexity science concepts. And sometimes enters in some deep renaming that is definitely confusing and most probably unnecessary. But at least there are some nice insights on how could an ontology be created based on emergence and modern dynamical systems theory. One of those books that are interesting more because of the idea and the struggle than for the end result.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If you like Deleuze, you'll love Manuel DeLanda!!" ...But it is truly an inciteful and clear dissection of Deleuze's virtual philosophy through lay (yet erudite) science and mathematics. Even the architects can get it.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

couldn't finish it... way too much jargon

[Llewellyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fashionable nonsense - essentially a math textbook copied over and then somehow connected to ideas like immanence.