Product Description

At the start of the 21st Century, Gilles Deleuze is now regarded as the most radical and influential of contemporary philosophers. Yet his work is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. Here, Manuel DeLanda makes sense of Deleuze for both analytic and continental thought, for both science and philosophy. DeLanda focuses on the intersection of philosophy and science, explaining how Deleuze's system of thought is fundamental to a proper understanding of contemporary science - from self-organisation to non-linear dynamics to complexity theory.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1036754 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Well expressed material complexity.
This is a well written clear expression of the scientific and mathematical foundations of the neo-realist ontology that Manuel DeLanda finds in the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Good Good Stuff
Delanda is certainly not the least controversial of Deleuzeans, so I imagine some folks will dislike the (sort of) analytic flavor of this work. Nonetheless it gives--or makes a painfully valient attempt to give--what a lot of 'clarificationary' work on Deleuze ultimately fails to provide. A solid, relevant reconstruction of Deleuze's world without all the cumbersome jargon that bogs down the more continental reconstructions (e.g., Badiou's "Clamor of Being"...really an excellent book, but rough-going in the prose department).
Delanda takes his by now standard fascination with complexity theory and other cool stuff and mines Deleuze's works for its scientific & mathematic underpinnings. John Protevi's "Political Physics," another book in this series, could be seen as an intro. to this book--not to downplay the significance of Protevi's work. Where Protevi explored the possibilities for Deleuzean applications to complexity, Delanda actually applies it, fearlessly, using the analytic style, I imagine, as a way to not cower in the face of some of Deleuze's absurdities. This work should be hotly debated, but it should be deeply appreciated as well, for the age of freeplay is waning, and now that the fog is clearing it really is time to figure out what the hell Deleuze was talking about.
This is first on my list of Deleuze commentaries, and it stands as a powerful independent work in its own right. Read it. Delanda rules.