Somers-Hall, (Ch.5), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘Chapter 5. The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible’, summary

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall’s Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Entry Directory]

 

[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Chapter 5. The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible

 

Very brief summary:

In Chapter 5, Deleuze examines how intensive difference is found in the extensive world and is at work in the productions of extensive properties and qualities. The Idea colludes with fields of intensity in the world so to explicate actualizable paths of development implicated in the Idea. On account of intensity’s “depth”, it cannot be represented, and also, it is a wellspring that continually injects difference, variety, and energy into the world by constantly generating differential relations. This depth is also at work in individuation, which is the fundamental process that produces the structures that secondarily come to be our subjectivity, ego, I, etc.  In efforts to represent intensity’s depth, we posit an Other as the grounds of representation, but it is an erroneous concept.

Brief summary: 
Intensive difference is at work in the generation of extensive properties and other qualities.  In thermodynamics, intensive differences in heat explain the work that is done in such thermodynamic systems as engines, for example. But more needs to be said, because we still need to know what makes intensive differences come about and regenerate. Since instead of succumbing to entropy which equalizes intensive differences and reduces the world to a homogenized disorder, we instead have living forms that increase intensive difference and tend toward heterogeneous order. These intensive differences that are spatially distributed come about on account of a deeper sort of intensity of some kind which generates also the extensive space and qualities within it, and as well it is responsible for the continual renewal of intensive difference in the world. One way to distinguish intensive from extensive multiplicities is what happens when you divide them: divisions of extensity produce homogeneous parts, while divisions of intensity produce heterogeneous ones. Intensities interact with Ideas when explicating into extensive actualizations. The Idea provides a network of actualizable outcomes, and the intensive circumstances of the world help channel the unfolding of those actualizations. For example, the DNA of the embryo is like the Idea, and it instructs the cell to divide, but the differential relations in the given chemical make-up of the embryo encourage certain divisions of the cell rather than others. Thus this development is dramatized. There is also a developmental process underlying who we are. It is our individuation, which is not our self, subject, or ego, but it is responsible for them. Since it is unrepresentable, our faculties fail to recognize it. They instead see as the grounds for representation a supposed Other which is the omni-perspectival view on the world that guarantees the wholeness of its parts. But in fact it is representable. Also, since philosophical thinking takes us to the pre-subjective structures of the world and ourselves, it is a solitary and solipsistic exercise.

Summary

(5.1 Introduction) We move now from the Idea to the role of intensive difference in space. (5.2 Thermodynamics and Transcendental Illusion) For Deleuze, difference is a difference in intensity. In thermodynamics, a system performs more work when there is a greater differential between input and environmental temperatures. In other words, an intensive difference is what changes the functioning of the system. But thermodynamics also has the idea of entropy, which implies that heat differentials in systems over time tend to equalize as the system enters into a state of homogenized order. Deleuze thinks thermodynamics is missing the element of the creation of differentials. Thermodynamics cannot for example explain the generation of life forms, where there is a movement toward more and greater differentials as the organisms becomes increasingly heterogeneous and organized rather than homogeneously disordered. (5.3 Merleau-Ponty and Depth) Deleuze has three spatial syntheses that are parallel to the temporal ones. 1) Intensive differences become spatially localized by being distributed into various spatial locations. From there they may exchange locations on the basis of how they relate, like how heat moves toward cold. 2) Intensive depth somehow generates the extensive space that intensities explicate into along with the qualities that are obtained. 3) The distributions of intensive differences along with their extensive properties and other qualities remains fresh and dynamic, because the intensive depth responsible for them returns eternally. In this way, newness and variety are continually injected into systems, which counteracts the tendencies toward entropy. (5.4 The Three Characteristics of Intensity) Intensity is of the realm of the spatium, and extensity of the extensum. Intensity explicates into extensity, thus intensity is more fundamental. The extensum is a homogenously divisible multiplicity, since its divisions produce parts of the same nature. This is what happens when we divide measures of space for example. The spatium is a heterogeneously divisible multiplicity, since each division produces parts that differ in nature. For example, were we to divide our consciousness of a melody between what it was like many moments before and what it is like now, we will find that the experiences are qualitatively different. Intensity has three important features, it includes the unequal in itself, since it does not divide into equal parts, it affirms difference, since its differential relations are not negational, and it is an implicated, enveloped, or embryonized quantity, since it explicates into extensities. (5.5 Individuation) Differential potentials in the physical world, like the electrical ones that create lightening, are intensive differences that explicate into extensive ones. There are actualizable outcomes implicated in the intensive relations that become explicit and manifest in the extensive world. For explication to happen, there is firstly the Idea, which is the structure of actualizable instantiations which in the Idea are a network of complicatedly implicated differential relations. The Idea establishes the sorts of solutions that can be taken. But the Idea interacts with the fields of intensities in the world which co-determine which actualization will explicate. For example, the embryo has a DNA code which can be thought of as the Idea. But this has to do with how it interacts with the intensive situation of the embryos and not because it is a fixed code. Certain intensive differences like in the chemical composition of the embryo help determine how the embryo develops. Thus the development is dramatized, since it is not entirely predetermined by the DNA. (5.6 The Other) For Deleuze, the individual is not the same as the ego, subject, I, etc. Rather, the individual has more to do with the generative processes that allow these other subjective structures to arise. Our faculties cannot recognize this generative process within us, since it is sub-representational. They have a solution for this, but it does not succeed. They need a non-representational basis for representation. They note how our perspectival limitations only give us fragments of the world and never complete objects. We seem however to posit an unlimited omni-perspectival view that guarantees the wholeness and unity of the parts of the world. But this omni-perspectival view is not possible for any subjectivity, and is thus seen as the Other. Because it creates a common constituted world for all of our judgments to agree about, the Other is the basis for representation. But such an Other is not really unrepresentable, but is only so for human which are perspectivally limited. But to really be the basis for representation, it needs to be un-representable. Deleuze also thinks that since philosophical thinking takes the thinker to the pre-subjective structures of reality, including those within oneself, it is a solitary and solipsistic exercise.

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (5.2), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘5.2 Thermodynamics and Transcendental Illusion (222–9/280–8)’, summary

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall’s Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Entry Directory]

 

[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

Chapter 5. The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensiblence

 

5.2 Thermodynamics and Transcendental Illusion (222–9/280–8)

 

 

Brief summary: 

For Deleuze, difference is difference in intensity. We see in Carnot’s thermodynamic ideas, particularly the second law of thermodynamics, the energetic power of intensive differentials. A thermodynamic system has more power to perform its work when there is a greater difference of temperature between its input heat and its output or environmental cold. However, in other ways, thermodynamics is fundamentally incompatible with Deleuze’s metaphysics. Thermodynamics thinks there is entropy in thermodynamic systems whereby heat differentials tend to equalize over time as systems tend toward a state of homogenized disorder. But Deleuze notes that there is another factor that thermodynamics is missing, which is the generation of the intensive differentials. Thermodynamics cannot for example explain the generation of life, in which there is movement toward more and greater differentials as the organism diversifies and becomes increasingly heterogeneous and organized rather than homogeneously disordered.

Summary

Deleuze opens chapter 5 of DR with a discussion of thermodynamics, which “deals fundamentally with the properties of heat” (SH 167). Carnot is the founder of this field. “His main discovery was that the efficiency of even an ideal frictionless engine was dependent on the difference between its hottest and coldest parts: the greater the difference, the greater the efficiency” (167). SH will “explore Deleuze’s engagement with thermodynamics by looking at three questions. First, what is the transcendental principle that thermodynamics embodies? Second, why does this transcendental principle reinforce rather than overturn good sense? And third, why does Deleuze consider this transcendental principle to be a transcendental illusion?” (167).

So we begin with the “transcendental principle of thermodynamics” which is the second law of thermodynamics. [It seems to be saying that heat always moves from warm to cold places, unless another factor intervenes:]  “The transcendental principle of thermodynamics rests on the second law of thermodynamics. This is, in Clausius’ formulation, the claim that ‘heat does not pass from a body at low temperature to one at high temperature without an accompanying change elsewhere’ (Atkins 2010: 42)” (SH 167). What interests us is the insight of Carnot’s underlying this law.  In order to increase a thermodynamic system’s ability or power to conduct its work, we can either increase the temperature of for example the steam going into the system or else we may decrease the temperature outside it. [I am not sure I understand how this works. Let us just quickly look at some diagrams of a Serling Engine that I have found online. The first one is from Chris Woodford at ExplainThatStuff!:

Here is quotation of Woodford’s explanation:

1) Heating and expansion: The gas starts off on the left in the hot end of the cylinder. It's heated by the fire (or other heat source) so its pressure rises and it expands, absorbing energy. As the gas expands, it pushes the work piston to the right, which drives the flywheel and whatever the engine is powering. In this part of the cycle, the engine converts heat energy into mechanical energy (and does work).

2) Transfer and cooling: The displacer piston moves to the left and the hot gas moves around it to the cooler part of the cylinder on the right. Both pistons now move to the right together, so the volume of the gas remains constant as it passes through the regenerator (heat exchanger), giving up some of its energy on the way.

3) Cooling and compression: Now the gas arrives in the coldest part of the cylinder, by the heat sink. Here it cools and contracts, giving up some of its heat, which is removed by the heat sink, and both pistons move inward.

4) Transfer and regeneration: The displacer piston moves to the right and the cooled gas moves around it to the hotter part of the cylinder on the left. The volume of the gas remains constant as it passes back through the regenerator (heat exchanger) to pick up some of the heat it previously deposited. The gas is now back where it started and the process can repeat.
(diagram and text taken gratefully from: Chris Woodford at ExplainThatStuff!)

Here is another animated diagram of a Stirling Engine from the course webpage of David Wallace’s and Douglas Hart’s MIT course, Mechanical Engineering Tools.

Here is quotation from their webpage:

Stirling engines are unique heat engines because their theoretical efficiency is nearly equal to their theoretical maximum efficiency, known as the Carnot Cycle efficiency. Stirling engines are powered by the expansion of a gas when heated, followed by the compression of the gas when cooled. The Stirling engine contains a fixed amount of gas that is transferred back and forth between a “cold” end (often room temperature) and a “hot” end (often heated by a kerosene or alcohol burner). The “displacer piston” moves the gas between the two ends and the “power piston” changes the internal volume as the gas expands and contracts.

Air in the engine is cyclically heated (by an alcohol burner) and expands to push the power piston (shown in blue) to the right. As the power piston moves to the right, the yellow linkage forces the loose-fitting, red "piston" (on the left half of the machine) to displace air to the cooler side of the engine. The air on the cool side loses heat to the outside world and contracts, pulling the blue piston to the left. The air is again displaced, sending it back to the hotter region of the engine, and the cycle repeats.

The Stirling engine cycle can also be used “in reverse”, to convert rotating motion into a temperature differential (and thus provide refrigeration).

(Image and text taken gratefully from David Wallace’s and Douglas Hart’s MIT course, Mechanical Engineering Tools, webpage)

Perhaps the idea here is that we can make the engine work harder by increasing the heat that pushes the piston. Or, consider also if on the other side the gas in the chamber were cooler. Perhaps that would mean that the tendency for the heated air to expand and push the piston to the colder side would be greater, and thus with the same amount of heat input there would be more force to the expansion. Or, perhaps what we should be interested in is the third step of cooling and compression, when “The air on the cool side loses heat to the outside world and contracts,” and so were the outside world colder, perhaps this contraction would be more forceful. Probably I have this wrong, but what we are looking for is the work being greater were the difference between hot and cold to be greater. What is important here philosophically is that difference in intensity, that is in this case, the difference between two temperatures, is what is responsible for the work. Deleuze also claims that intensity is difference, perhaps because for example temperature is already a matter of difference or variation, but I am not sure.]

Now, this statement rests on a central insight by Carnot that, when we look at a system, the work that the system is able to do is not dependent on the heat entering the system, but rather on the difference between the temperature entering the system and the temperature leaving the system. Thus, if we wished to improve the efficiency of, say, a steam engine, we could do this either by increasing the temperature of the steam that powers it, or alternatively we could reduce the temperature of the environment surrounding the generator (although only the first of these alternatives is in general really practical). The important implication of this is that what allows work to be done by a system is not intensity (temperature in this case), but rather difference in intensity (and in fact Deleuze makes the stronger claim that ‘intensity is difference’ [DR | 223/281])
(SH 167-168)

[I do not follow the next points so well. The next one seems to be that because difference in temperature is needed for the engine to work, difference is needed for anything whatsoever to happen or to appear. “Carnot’s work shows that if the input and output energies of an engine were equal, the efficiency of the engine would drop to zero. Thus, difference is fundamentally implicated in ‘everything which happens and everything which appears’ (DR 222/280)”. But I do not know how to draw that inference yet. Perhaps the idea is that for something to appear or to happen, there needs to be a change, and for there to be a change, there needs to be imbalance and thus difference in intensity like between hot and cold. This also holds for phenomenal appearing. The next idea seems to be that were thermodynamics to stop here at the second law, then it would be compatible with Deleuze’s metaphysics of difference. But thermodynamics has other notions which are not compatible with Deleuze’s philosophy, namely, entropy and the equalization of differences.]

Carnot’s work shows that if the input and output energies of an engine were equal, the efficiency of the engine would drop to zero. Thus, difference is fundamentally implicated in ‘everything which happens and everything which appears’ (DR 222/280). In line with Deleuze’s distinction between the transcendental and the empirical, Deleuze draws from this the principle that ‘every phenomenon flashes in a signal-sign system’ (DR 222/280). Just as the difference in the intensity of temperature gives rise to work, Deleuze’s claim is that more generally, differences in intensity manifest themselves as qualities in the phenomenal world. If this were the final result of thermodynamics, then clearly it would provide a model of physics commensurate with Deleuze’s metaphysics. Deleuze claims, however, that thermodynamics betrays its own principle of difference through the introduction of entropy, and the concomitant equalisation of differences.
(168)

But such thermodynamic systems are never perfectly efficient, since some energy will always be lost rather than put to work. For example, a steam engine heats its surrounding air, which is heat lost outside the system. [I am not sure I completely follow the next point about refrigeration. The important idea seems to be that refrigerators are open systems, since they exchange heat with the environment (I am not sure how they work, but perhaps what they are doing is keeping the inside cold by pushing the heat out of the system). The other important idea here seems to be that it maintains a temperature differential, I suppose between the inside of the system and the outside, where instead of heat going to the cold, that is, moving from outside to inside, it instead moves from cold to hot, that is inside to outside. I am not sure why that is important, but maybe the idea is that the refrigerator seems to act against forces of entropy. However, the whole universe, which is a closed system since it has no outside to it, will not be able to maintain temperature differentials, since they will all tend to equalize. This means eventually all temperatures will homogenize. It also means that time is moving in the direction toward this ‘heat death’.]

If we return to Carnot’s engine, we can see that useful work cannot be done with total efficiency by the engine (except in the impossible situation of a difference between absolute zero and an infinite temperature). What happens to the heat that isn’t converted into work by the engine? Well, this energy is introduced into the output reservoir as heat (just as a steam engine heats the environment as well as moving the train). Thus, in the process of doing work, the system reduces the difference between the two temperatures. It is possible to reverse this process within the system itself by doing work (a refrigerator, for instance, is able to reduce the temperature of objects placed within it), but this work itself will not be totally efficient. We can see this in the case of the refrigerator if we take into account its environment. In order to create a temperature differential, it requires a flow of energy from outside of it. So while the refrigerator allows heat to flow from bodies at low temperature to bodies at higher temperatures, this is only as a result of an interaction with its environment whereby energy is supplied to it by equalising a temperature differential elsewhere (the power station, for instance). In this case, a temperature differential is maintained in the system because the system exchanges heat with its environment (it is what is known as an open system); but if we look at the universe as a whole as a system, we can see that in this case, there is no further environment with which it can exchange energy (it is a closed system). Now, given the first law of thermodynamics, which states that there is a fixed quantity of energy in the world, then, over time, as various processes in the universe do work, more energy will be lost as heat as a result of inefficiency. Eventually, | the differences in intensity that make work possible will themselves be equalised by this loss of heat, leading to what Boltzmann called the ‘heat death’ of the universe, as it becomes a homogeneous field of constant temperature. This, according to thermodynamics, is what gives the ‘arrow of time’ a direction: time only moves in one direction because certain processes are irreversible.
(168-169)

Deleuze will now relate these notions to the good sense and common sense. [I do not follow this part very well. For this we need to recall that “common sense refers to the indeterminate structures of the subject and the object.” But I do not remember what this indeterminacy is, so I am missing most of the reasoning here. Maybe the idea is that the world we encounter, and we ourselves, are not determinate but secondarily obtain determinations through our faculties’ cooperating to recognize objects and ourselves. The basic idea (the reasoning behind which I do not grasp at all) seems to be that if we regard the world as being made of indeterminate objects and subjects, then we will also think that the world is made of properties which are differential relations that dissipate, equalize, and homogenize like heat is thought to do in thermodynamics. Let me quote it so we have it right:]

Deleuze relates this result to the structures of good sense and common sense. As we saw, common sense refers to the indeterminate structures of the subject and the object. Now, we never actually encounter indeterminate objects, but rather a field of objects, each with diverse properties. It was good sense that related these various properties together into a hierarchy, such as the tree of Porphyry, affirming their ordered relation to the object as an instance of an object in general. Here, thermodynamics provides a physical instance of this process. If the properties of objects are defined by differences in intensity, then thermodynamics shows that over time, these differences, and hence the properties they sustain, will be cancelled out. The heat death of the universe, with its model of total homogeneity, is the final affirmation of the true nature of the world as grounded in indeterminate subjects and objects, despite the transient appearance of diversity that appears to signal otherwise [the following up to citation is Deleuze quotation, and the bracketed text to follow is SH’s].

[Good sense] ensures the distribution of that difference in such a manner that it tends to be cancelled in the object, and because it provides a rule according to which the different objects tend to equalise themselves and the different Selves tend to become uniform, good sense in turn points towards the instance of a common sense which provides it with both the form of a universal Self and that of an indeterminate object. (DR 226/285)

Thus, organised systems tend to fall into disorder over time as the intensive differences that allow structure and useful work to take place give way to a disordered field lacking in any organising differences in intensity.
(SH 169)

Deleuze thinks this thermodynamic model is a transcendental illusion. This is because it assumes that the differences in intensity are pregivens rather than needing to be generated and distributed in the first place. These theories were invented by people whose interest was in isolated systems that are brought into interaction with other systems, like engines brought into relation with their environment as they are put to work. [The next idea seems to be that when you link up two systems, disorder increases because you have more variables and factors interacting.] But we also find that systems tend to isolate themselves from their environments and instead of increasing entropy, decrease it, as in the case of living beings and their evolution. Thermodynamics cannot account for the emergence of life, which acts contrary to entropy, [since it generates more differentials, heterogeneities, and variations rather than decrease them into a state of disordered homogeneity.]

Finally, why is this model considered by Deleuze to be a transcendental illusion? As Deleuze notes, the theory of thermodynamics is a partial truth, but it becomes a transcendental illusion when we attach ‘the feeling of the absolute to [this] partial [truth]’ (DR 226/284). This partial truth operates within the framework of ‘forms of energy which are already localised and distributed in extensity, or extensities already qualified by forms of energy’ (DR 223/281). As such, it assumes the differences in intensity as already given as preformed. What is missing | from the thermodynamic model is an account of the genesis of these intensive differences in the first place, and their localisation in particular regions of extensity (space). As Deleuze puts it, ‘perhaps good sense even presupposes madness in order to come after and correct what madness there is in any prior distribution’ (DR 224/283). Stewart and Cohen argue similarly in their study of complexity theory that the classical model of thermodynamics works well for the kinds of systems its inventors were interested in (Stewart and Cohen 2000: 258). These situations were where we have an individuated, isolated system that is brought into interaction with another system (the engine being brought into relation with its environment, or in Boltzmann’s classic example, the mixing of two gasses). In these cases, the amount of disorder increases because the number of systems has reduced, just as ‘a children’s party with ten children is far more chaotic than two parties with five each’ (Stewart and Cohen 2000: 258). If we move away from the mechanical models of the nineteenth century, we find that frequently systems are not just put into relation to their environment, but are also capable of isolating themselves from this environment. Life, for instance, is a process of individuation whereby new systems emerge, and with this emergence, decrease the amount of entropy present in the world: The features that are of interest when studying steam engines, however, are not particularly appropriate to the study of life . . . For systems such as these, the thermodynamic model of independent subsystems whose interactions switch on and off is simply not relevant. The features of thermodynamics either don’t apply, or are so long-term that they don’t model anything interesting. (Stewart and Cohen 2000: 259) While thermodynamics provides an account of processes affecting preconstituted systems, qualities and extensities, it does not account for the emergence of these systems, qualities and extensities in the first place. Much of the remainder of the chapter will attempt to show how intensity is central to this process of constitution.
(SH 169-170)

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

Atkins, Peter (2010), The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stewart, Ian, and Jack Cohen (2000), The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World, London: Penguin Books. Tomarchio, John (2002), ‘Aquinas’s Concept

Engine text and diagrams taken gratefully from:

Chris Woodford at ExplainThatStuff! “Stirling enginges.”
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-stirling-engines-work.html

David Wallace’s and Douglas Hart’s MIT course, Mechanical Engineering Tools. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-670-mechanical-engineering-tools-january-iap-2004/study-materials/

 

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (5.1), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘5.1 Introduction’, summary

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall’s Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Entry Directory]

 

[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

Chapter 5. The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensiblence

 

5.1 Introduction

 

 

Brief summary: 

In chapter 5 Deleuze will examine the role of intensive difference in space, which he will do through a critical reading of thermodynamics and by further applying his notion of the Idea.

Summary

SH notes that the fifth and final chapter of DR “shares much in common with Chapter 2” (166).

There, we saw Deleuze arguing that representation tended to falsify our understanding of time by relating it to the structures of common sense. Deleuze instead presented an account of time that grounded (or rather, ungrounded) it in a field of intensive difference.
(SH 166)

[Off the top of my head, I do not recall this discussion of the common sense and time in the second chapter, but perhaps one can double check by going back through it. The idea of the ungrounding of time in intensive difference perhaps is best found in section 2.12, but I am not certain.] So similar to chapter 2’s discussion of time is chapter 5’s discussion of the nature of space. We will see that it is in the scientific field of energetics or thermodynamics that intensity is connected to difference (166). Deleuze claims that

because thermodynamics sees the world in terms of systems that are already constituted (good sense and common sense), it is subject to the transcendental illusion that differences in energy or intensity tend to be cancelled out. This is what leads to Boltzmann’s famous hypothesis that the end of the universe will be a form of ‘heat death’, where all of its energy is homogeneously distributed, thus making any kind of order impossible. For this reason, Deleuze focuses in this chapter on the role of intensity in constituting systems and the space that they occupy. Recognising this moment gives us a more positive account of intensity. In the process, Deleuze clarifies how the differential model of Ideas that we looked at in the last chapter can be related to the field of intensive difference that Deleuze introduced in opposition to Aristotelian metaphysics.
(166)

 

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

The Useful Waste of Energy in Nietzsche's La Volonté de puissance, Livre II, 38

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Nietzsche Entry Directory]
[Nietzsche La Volonté de puissance, Entry Directory]

[The following is summary and not translation. Please check my interpretation against the original text, which is reproduced at the end.]

Friedrich Nietzsche

La Volonté de puissance

I

Livre II:

Morphologie et évolution de la Volonté de Puissance

38

[According to Julius Robert von Mayer,] the size of the chemical phenomenon always exceeds its useful effect. Steam engines convert only 1/20 of their heat energy into effective mechanical work, cannons only 1/10^th, and mammals only 1/5^th. This is how wasteful nature can be. Very much of the sun’s energy is never used. Our governments are incredibly wasteful as well. And, we expend much effort when controlling our animal instincts so to perform intellectual work instead, yet so little we gain despite the energy we invest. Thus utility is not the reason behind most operations and endeavors. It is not the “norm” in the way things work. But prodigality is not necessarily something bad. In fact, wastefulness might be necessary. When our instincts force themselves upon us violently, they too are wasteful of their energies. Might this violence be necessary as well?

38

« Les dimensions du phénomène chimique dépassent toujours son effet utile » (Mayer). « De bonnes machines à vapeur transforment environ 1/20 de leur chaleur en effet mécanique, les canons 1/10, les mammifères 1/5. » Prodigalité de la nature ! Et la chaleur solaire, d’après Proktor ! L’Etat comparé à son efficacité ! Le grand esprit ! Notre labeur intellectuel comparé à utilité qu’en retirent les instincts ! Donc, ne pas prendre faussement « l’utilité » pour « norme ». La prodigalité n’est pas nécessairement un vice ; il se peut qu’elle soit nécessaire. Il y aurait lieu aussi de parler ici de la violence des instincts. 1881-82 (XII, 1^re partie, § 140)

(p.211)

Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, I. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.

Power Perpetuation in Nietzsche and Lord Kelvin

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Nietzsche Entry Directory]

[Other entries in the Will to Power series]

[§1066 of The Will to Power, Nietzsche references Lord Kelvin when arguing for eternal recurrence.]

As forces battle, resolution tends to accumulate. Eventually a dynamical system will exhaust all its potential energy, and in a sense be "dead." William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) addresses this notion of entropy as expressed in the second law of thermodynamics. Like Nietzsche, he refuses to think that it is possible for the universe to ever exhaust its energy in a state of equilibrium. Also in a way similar to Nietzsche, Kelvin posits an "overruling creative power" that adds energy to the system. But his suggestion resembles a theological postulate. God keeps winding the watch. For Nietzsche, there is no such deified uncaused cause. It is far more mundane and worldly: the cast of dice.

One force might battle another. The first could be overwhelmingly stronger than the second. Part of what determines the outcome of the battle are the master-slave relations between the forces. The stronger force masters the weaker opponent. But the weaker force (our willpower, for example) can overcome these deterministic limitations by affirming raw wild chance. We might see that we are up against slightly superior forces. Even if we did our best, we probably will not overcome them. But say we never back down to this opponent. Time and time again we battle. He wins, wins, wins. One time dust flies in his eye for the instant of a critical moment. This tips the scales, and we overcome the superior force. It was chance. We won because there was the frenzied "noisy" interference of raw wild lunatic winds. Without the wind, the outcome is determinable. No extra force gets added to the system. But the winds brought change. They added force to our power. Pure insane chance adds power and creative novelty to cybernetic systems. It does so by adding wild chaotic noise that jiggles all the delicate parts around so that some unexpected outcome emerges [see this entry where Bateson discusses the pervasive effect small changes cause in cybernetic systems.]

Nietzsche builds his argument from Lord Kelvin's recognition that purely mechanistic theories lead to a final conclusion of dead equilibrium. Nietzsche goes further by incorporating his infinity theory. Time stretches back infinitely. That means every possibility must have happened already. If equilibrium were to happen, things would get stuck forever. But things are still changing dynamically, so the world must never have been in a state of equilibrium. If stasis never happened despite an infinite amount time and opportunity to do so, it cannot be possible. Thus stasis can never happen, even with an infinite future. So we cannot follow a physical theory if it concludes someday there will be equilibrium. Hence Nietzsche's advocacy of chance.

Here is the passage from Nietzsche's The Will to Power.

This is the sole certainty we have in our hands to serve as a corrective to a great host of world hypotheses possible in themselves. If, e. g., the mechanistic theory cannot avoid the consequence, drawn for it by William Thomson, of leading to a final state, then the mechanistic theory stands refuted. (549a)

And this is the opening paragraph to Lord Kelvin's "On the Age of the Sun’s Heat" where he explains the death of the universe and the creative forces that will prevent it:

The second great law of thermodynamics involves a certain principle of irreversible action in Nature. It is thus shown that, although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces gradual augmentation and diffusion of heat, cessation of motion, and exhaustion of potential energy through the material universe. The result would inevitably be a state of universal rest and death, if the universe were finite and left to obey existing laws. But it is impossible to conceive a limit to the extent of matter in the universe; and therefore science points rather to an endless progress, through an endless space, of action involving the transformation of potential energy into palpable motion and thence into heat, than to a single finite mechanism, running down like a clock, and stopping for ever. It is also impossible to conceive either the beginning or the continuance of life, without an overruling creative power; and, therefore, no conclusions of dynamical science regarding the future condition of the earth can be held to give dispiriting views as to the destiny of the race of intelligent beings by which it is at present inhabited.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. Transl Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1967.

This section available online at:

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nietzsche_wtp04.htm

Thomson, Sir William (Lord Kelvin). "On the Age of the Sun’s Heat." Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 5 (March 5, 1862), pp. 288-293. From reprint in Popular Lectures and Addresses, vol. 1, 2nd edition, pp. 356-375.

Available online at:

http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_the_age_of_the_suns_heat.html

Scott Wollschleger’s Inquisitive Connection between Engineering and Positivity (From Comments to the Summary of Welchman’s “Machinic Thinking")

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]

[Scott Wollschleger Entry Directory]

Scott Wollschleger insightfully wonders (in the Welchman post):

"thanks,this is great. can you say more about engineering? also would it be ok to say that what matters is also something positive by nature?"

Scott raises the perfect questions, because they connect two of the most essential ideas in the Welchman article.

Engines are production machines: they produce force. Thermodynamics is the study of changing heat (thermos) to motion or power (dynamis). The first law of thermodynamics is the law of the conservation of energy: no more energy can leave a system than has entered (or "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms"). The second principle of thermodynamics is entropy: differences in forces tend to equalize in a system. When you put hot coffee in a mug, the mug cools the coffee and the coffee warms the mug, and slowly they tend towards about the same temperature.

Deleuze is a more revolutionary thermodynamicist, because he is a “Difference Engineer”: in the first place, what matters in Deleuze’s thermodynamics is positivity, as Scott insightfully observes. We might consider a certain machine, let’s say a music-composer-machine, who designs on his drawing board intricate musical pieces that themselves are little machines, which then produce performances and recordings that produce listenings, which then produce new ideas and viewpoints in other minds, and so forth. This composer – this engineer who is himself an engine that produces more engines – this composer-engineer has a net positive of force (hence creative dynamics does not obey the law of conservation of energy) because, this music engineer does not become less productive and effective as a composer, rather, his composing powers become greater with time. His internal creative forces do not cancel each other over time, resulting in stasis, rather they build upon themselves so that he actually gains more creative power (and thus creative dynamics does not obey the principle of entropy).

The reason for these broken laws is that thermodynamics is not a matter of science for Deleuze, but instead a matter of engineering. Scientists want to isolate consistent principles that describe the way things work. Engineers want to produce things. Engineers discover principles of reality, but they do so by making things which perform a function that responds to a real and immediate problem. There are concrete forces in the world – needs, desires, wars – that fuel ingenuity. The sciences tend to be too abstract; they do not touch ground. Hence for Deleuze, we must be engineers of reality, we must produce machines and be machines, rather than think of ourselves as distinct from machines and study them impartially. Machines in Deleuze are not mechanisms that stay the way they are, but are a part of a larger machine that itself is changing according to intense forces.

So the fuel for machines are intensive forces. The reason that the world around us changes is because there are competing forces whose outcomes have to do with given conditions combined with pure chance, the dice throw. This is partly why machinization cannot be a science. It must be engineering, because engineers work on the battlefields, responding constantly to changing unpredictable conditions of war.

The positivity of course then is the absence of entropy and of the conservation of energy. The intensive forces do not decrease but instead continue raging. Although intensive forces cancel when they explicate into extensity, as when a hammer hits hot steel to produce weapons, intensive forces nonetheless are always implicated within each other, which means you can take one away, but there is forever another one left-over self-expressing from within it. So forces continue, and productions forever add reality to reality. There is no principle of destruction or dissolution, merely additive becoming.