hmmm- the dialectic - transformation of quantity into quality &c &c....
--- On Sun, 3/6/11, info <[email protected]> wrote: From: info <[email protected]> Subject: [NetBehaviour] Abstract Machines: Nonlinear dynamics and the films of Manuel DeLanda. To: "NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, March 6, 2011, 1:14 PM Abstract Machines: Nonlinear dynamics and the films of Manuel DeLanda. By Ed Halter. One of the ideas that philosopher Manuel DeLanda frequently returns to is that of phase transitions, a term from thermodynamics for “events which take place at critical values of some parameter (temperature, for example), switching a physical system from one state to another, like the critical points of temperature at which water changes from ice to liquid, or from liquid to steam,” as he writes in Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002). Phase transitions are a central concept of his best-known book, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997), in which he attempts to rethink typical narratives of human development in favor of the dynamic shifts from one structural form to another: imagine nomadic societies flowing like liquid, for example, then crystallizing into cities, only to atomize into diaspora under pressure. In Deleuze: History and Science (2010), he evokes the related mathematical concept of phase space, a way to picture all the potential states a system might undergo. “This set of states,” he writes, “may be represented as a space of possibilities with as many dimensions as the system has degrees of freedom.” http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/abstract-machines-20110304 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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