The key for me is the notion of the “consistency” or
“assemblage” (a flexible, open system, what Manuel calls a “meshwork”).
Traditional systems theory, as well as its cousin cybernetics, was fixated on the
notion of homeostasis, which measured a system’s ability, via negative feedback
loops, to return to a set point after environmental shocks. The key point here is
“stability”: how much of a shock can the system withstand and still return to
“normal”? An open system, on the other hand, possesses “resilience”: the ability
to form new patterns and thresholds, either as the result of an environmental
shock or as the result of endogenous “evolutionary drift”, to use the term of
Francisco Varela. What’s great about Deleuze and Guattari is that they give us a
wide-ranging and nuanced ontology with which to think about the difference
between such systems. And this ontology seems to resonate with the latest
science. Stuart Kauffman’s latest work in Investigations, in which he talks about
the expansion of biospheres into “the adjacent possible” seems to me to fit right
into the DeleuzoGuattarian notion of an open, expanding, creative, multiverse.
Deleuzian Interrogations: A Conversation
with Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and
Torkild Thanem
Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and Torkild Thanem
De Landa, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory And Social Complexity. Continuum. November 14, 2006.
Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization
Science (www.tamarajournal.com).
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