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A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
Following in the wake of his groundbreaking work War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Manuel De Landa presents a brilliant, radical synthesis of historical development of the last thousand years. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, while engaging — in an entirely unprecedented manner — the critical new understanding of material processes derived from the sciences of dynamics. Working against prevailing attitudes that see history merely as the arena of texts, discourses, ideologies, and metaphors, De Landa traces the concrete movements and interplays of matter and energy through human populations in the last millennium. The result is an entirely novel approach to the study of human societies and their always mobile, semi-stable forms, cities, economies, technologies, and languages.
De Landa attacks three domains that have given shape to human societies: economics, biology, and linguistics. In each case, De Landa discloses the self-directed processes of matter and energy interacting with the whim and will of human history itself to form a panoramic vision of the West free of rigid teleology and naive notions of progress and, even more important, free of any deterministic source for its urban, institutional, and technological forms. The source of all concrete forms in the West’s history, rather, is shown to derive from internal morphogenetic capabilities that lie within the flow of matter—energy itself.
A Swerve Edition.
De Landa attacks three domains that have given shape to human societies: economics, biology, and linguistics. In each case, De Landa discloses the self-directed processes of matter and energy interacting with the whim and will of human history itself to form a panoramic vision of the West free of rigid teleology and naive notions of progress and, even more important, free of any deterministic source for its urban, institutional, and technological forms. The source of all concrete forms in the West’s history, rather, is shown to derive from internal morphogenetic capabilities that lie within the flow of matter—energy itself.
A Swerve Edition.
333 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1997
About the author
Manuel DeLanda
28 books164 followersManuel 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'.
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July 28, 2019
This was a tough read, as I treaded on (for me) unknown territory. I’m an historian by training, and this book, though focusing on history between 1000 and 2000 AD, is foremost a philosophy book, and even then, a special kind of a philosophy book . De Landa offers, as far as I have understood, a materialistic view on history. For those of you that react shocked (“I thought we had left materialism behind in the ruins of marxism?”), I have to nuance my bold statement: it is materialism, but corrected by nonlinearity. I guess I have to explain this.
De Landa starts with Prigogine and Stengers and their findings on complexity and chaos; again and again he stresses that reality isn’t linear, isn’t predictable, but is part of a complex network of flows of matter and energy; for him – and that’s his central these – human history has no manifest destiny, there’s no progress, just the mumble jumble of matter and energy, with a nonpredictable outcome. So far, I can follow him up to a certain point. I’m firmly convinced that strictly linear causality is a poor way of explaining history. Thus, I’m open to other ways of looking at history.
But then, De Landa, is convinced that this historical reality can be analyzed and looked at in a very structuralistic way, discovering the processes that are structuring this evolution. And here he borrows heavily, not to say almost completely on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their elaborate, abstract terminology to analyze the historical dynamics. We hear about meshworks and hierarchic structures, stratification and destratification, accelerators and replicators, catalysts and autocatalystic loops, mineralizing and coagulating, nobbs and hardenings, etc. etc. With this structuralistic toolkit he attacks historical processes in 3 different areas: geology, biology and linguistics; by this I mean that he first extensively explains the theory of structural dynamics in these areas, and then in a very short chapter looks to the historical facts to illustrate his theory. In this way he concludes that all phenomena (material, genetic, cultural) are processed in the same – albeit very complex - way, a conclusion that in fact was also his starting point! By this he means that for instance the evolution of languages and other products of human culture isn't different from the formation of rocks: they are all subjected to the same kind of structural processes.
Now, I don’t want to ridicule De Landa’s effort. There’s nothing wrong with looking at history from a different point of view, and often his theoretical approach did make me jump up and say: “I’ve never looked at this historical evolution in this or that way, that’s refreshing”. The bits on the role of cities in human history or on the dynamic evolution of languages for instance, were really interesting. But in general, the outcome of his great theoretical effort was rather plain. In short it seems that De Landa kind of put the historical facts as we know them through a food processor, blending them into an abstract mix, with very poor result.
One side remark: as an historian I cannot but note that for his historical facts and views De Landa constantly refers to Fernand Braudel, William H. McNeill and Michel Foucault. Now, these certainly are giants of historical research, and they have enriched our view on history in decisive ways. But, let’s be honest: these people studied history at least half a century ago! In the meantime, history has moved on (pun intended), and both the historical knowledge and the view on history has developed beyond these “monstres sacrés”. To point at just one thing: De Landa’s historical examples manifestly adhere to the classic, eurocentric way of looking at history. For someone that wanted to shed new light on history, that’s a poor starting point.
De Landa starts with Prigogine and Stengers and their findings on complexity and chaos; again and again he stresses that reality isn’t linear, isn’t predictable, but is part of a complex network of flows of matter and energy; for him – and that’s his central these – human history has no manifest destiny, there’s no progress, just the mumble jumble of matter and energy, with a nonpredictable outcome. So far, I can follow him up to a certain point. I’m firmly convinced that strictly linear causality is a poor way of explaining history. Thus, I’m open to other ways of looking at history.
But then, De Landa, is convinced that this historical reality can be analyzed and looked at in a very structuralistic way, discovering the processes that are structuring this evolution. And here he borrows heavily, not to say almost completely on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their elaborate, abstract terminology to analyze the historical dynamics. We hear about meshworks and hierarchic structures, stratification and destratification, accelerators and replicators, catalysts and autocatalystic loops, mineralizing and coagulating, nobbs and hardenings, etc. etc. With this structuralistic toolkit he attacks historical processes in 3 different areas: geology, biology and linguistics; by this I mean that he first extensively explains the theory of structural dynamics in these areas, and then in a very short chapter looks to the historical facts to illustrate his theory. In this way he concludes that all phenomena (material, genetic, cultural) are processed in the same – albeit very complex - way, a conclusion that in fact was also his starting point! By this he means that for instance the evolution of languages and other products of human culture isn't different from the formation of rocks: they are all subjected to the same kind of structural processes.
Now, I don’t want to ridicule De Landa’s effort. There’s nothing wrong with looking at history from a different point of view, and often his theoretical approach did make me jump up and say: “I’ve never looked at this historical evolution in this or that way, that’s refreshing”. The bits on the role of cities in human history or on the dynamic evolution of languages for instance, were really interesting. But in general, the outcome of his great theoretical effort was rather plain. In short it seems that De Landa kind of put the historical facts as we know them through a food processor, blending them into an abstract mix, with very poor result.
One side remark: as an historian I cannot but note that for his historical facts and views De Landa constantly refers to Fernand Braudel, William H. McNeill and Michel Foucault. Now, these certainly are giants of historical research, and they have enriched our view on history in decisive ways. But, let’s be honest: these people studied history at least half a century ago! In the meantime, history has moved on (pun intended), and both the historical knowledge and the view on history has developed beyond these “monstres sacrés”. To point at just one thing: De Landa’s historical examples manifestly adhere to the classic, eurocentric way of looking at history. For someone that wanted to shed new light on history, that’s a poor starting point.
July 28, 2023
Ένα παράξενο μείγμα αναλογιών ανάμεσα στην οικονομία, τη γεωλογία, τη βιολογία και την τεχνολογία με σκοπό να δείξει ότι ο κόσμος μας διέπεται από μια μη γραμμική δυναμική η οποία καθιστά αδύνατη τη λεπτομερή πρόβλεψη και τον έλεγχο. Άκρως ενδιαφέροντα τα μέρη του βιβλίου στα οποία ο Ντε Λάντα διερευνά το πώς γεωλογικές μετακινήσεις όπως οι προσχώσεις και οι ιζηματογενείς αποθέσεις μπορούν να χρησιμοποιηθούν για να «διαβαστεί» η δημιουργία των ανθρώπινων πόλεων και προβαίνει σε εκτενείς αναφορές στην ιστορία, ανατρέχοντας συνεχώς στις πηγές από τα θεμελιώδη έργα του Φερνάν Μπρωντέλ ("Capitalism and Material Life", "The Wheels of Commerce", "The Perspective of the World") και του Ουίλιαμ ΜακΝήλ ("The Pursuit of Power", "Plagues and Peoples").
March 31, 2023
§1: Synopsis
What happens when history is treated as a matter of flows? Flows of rocks, of people, microbes, languages, food, and money? Flows that accelerate and decelerate, intensify and extensify, coagulate and stratify, catalyse and come to a halt? Well, Manuel De Landa’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History is what happens. This is history, but not as you know it: not class struggle, not great men, not events, and still less even nation-states; De Landa instead tracks, as it were, inputs and outputs, all the ingredients that go into making the Grand Events of history, but ingredients that usually fall far below and above the thresholds of what captures our given attention.
Hence its ‘nonlinearity’: De Landa’s history is equally a history of scales (how do you get from rocks to mountains? From cities to states?), as much ‘horizontal’ across time (‘what’ happened), as ‘vertical’ through time (‘how’ it happened). And it’s in the way that this ‘how’ is shared across time and scale, that constitutes the philosophical interest of this book. Indeed De Landa’s opening sentence runs: “this is not a book of history, but a book of philosophy”. And it is so to the extent that the history within - of which there is plenty, almost too much - testifies to the philosophy, exhibits it in a way rarely done, with a degree of erudition and learning that verges on the superhuman.
Just consider the scope of this thing: broken up into three sections, on economics, biology, and linguistics - De Landa reads as though fluent in all three, not only synthesising but also intervening among an ocean of literature, so as to carve out his own distinctive spot amongst it all. The ‘thousand years’ that he covers - from roughly 1000AD to 2000AD - is itself a story of what he calls ‘intensification’: with natural flows accelerating, expanding, and setting off new flows, which in turn, do the same. To take just one example of the innumerable many within, De Landa charts how the intensification of trade was itself relayed in the dynamics of colonialism and conquest, fed into the explosive era of the industrial revolution, and transduced into the enormous sloshy flows of fast finance that governs so much of the economy today.
And that’s just in the ‘economics’ third of the book! But if that’s the kind of story he tells ‘across’ time, then what about ‘through’ it? Well here does the philosophical accent really pick up, with De Landa leaning into the use of the tools from dynamic systems theory on the one hand, and the work of the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on the other, to specify the various mechanisms, shared across all three domains, that generate these movements of intensification. Dubbed ‘structure-generating processes’ or ‘engineering diagrams’, the stake of De Landa’s book is to show that these processes are, in fact, the same - identical even - among all the disparate scales and times that he looks at, showing them to be at work regardless of the domain examined.
Think about that for a moment: this means that geology, economics, life, and even culture are all governed by the same mechanisms which drive their long-term dynamics, and De Landa here is making the claim to have found - or at least, to be relaying the finding of - those mechanisms! This is real big picture stuff, and the intrigue of A Thousand Years is in the convincing and meticulous way in which De Landa works to substantiate his thesis. Is it successful? Within limits, I think yes. De Landa’s is a coldly mechanical look at history, and there’s no doubt that the mechanisms he outlines do the work he says they do. But what they are not, is exhaustive.
§2: Commentary
Politics, for instance, is given short shift here, and one is more likely to find De Landa talking about the 'crossing of thresholds between stable state attractors', rather than say, struggle and achievement. In the one mention of the French Revolution that is found here, De Landa is concerned with… the language of the time. But more than just a quibble about pathos, this leads to curious oversights - as with De Landa’s buying into (the very 90s-00s) trope that states are ever more on the wane, and that globalisation would see a decline in their capacities for the exercise of power. This, in turn, follows from De Landa’s overly schematic way of assessing organization - as either a matter of ‘meshworks’ or ‘hierarchies’ and the sliding scale between the two. Roughly: a matter of less or more formalised organization and homogenisation, with De Landa exhibiting a marked but qualified preference for the former and its heterogeneity.
This kind of ‘left-libertarian’ impulse - which is, to be fair, far more implied than made explicit - feeds into De Landa’s quibble with Marxist accounts of history: ‘capitalism’ for De Landa is far too ’totalizing’ a lens to examine history, and, following the work of historian Fernand Braudel (whose writing on the longue durée of history is unsurprisingly central to A Thousand Years), De Landa prefers instead to see capitalism as merely one more mode of social organization working alongside others. To which one wants to add: it sure is, but as any account of capitalism shows, part of its perniciousness is the way in which is parasitises upon those other modes of organization all the better to entrench itself (think here of housework and carework, notorious for their status as unacknowledged support beams of capitalist reproduction). Totalization and differentiation can't simply be treated as poles to measure organization by.
But confined, as it were, to the two parametric measures of ‘heterogeneity’ and ‘homogeneity’ (parameters which are naturally lent by the effort to view history by means of systems theory), these kinds of dynamics simply ‘slip through’ the otherwise rich conceptual apparatus that governs A Thousand Years. And if, in dealing with the State and with capitalism - arguably among the two most pressing topics of concern for today - A Thousand Years cannot find firm footing, then one can’t but help be suspicious of the utility of this approach to history. To continue a little bit, De Landa's allergy to speaking about capitalism extends right down to his vocabulary. At some point in the book, he simply stops calling it capitalism and - again following Braudel - refers to it instead as a matter of 'anti-markets', in that capitalism for him is a matter of consolidation and monopolizing, such that the heterogeneity of market players are suppressed for the sake of just a few.
But to anyone who has borne witness to the hopping-mad proliferation of market-logics into every possible sphere of life, under the auspices of a capitalism in its flowering, neoliberal mode, to speak of capitalism as 'anti-markets' is its own brand of madness. In this, De Landa basically falls on the side of contemporary apologists who, blaming capitalism's ills on a pathologized 'crony capitalism' gone off the rails, hope instead for a capitalism kept a little better in check, accorded its own its own plot in the wider garden of socio-economic organization. But, as Deleuze and Guattari themselves understood - following Marx - the only limit to capitalism is capitalism itself, which otherwise corrodes every effort to circumscribe it here and there. De Landa's effort to ward this off by claiming to 'correct' D&G in the conclusion to A Thousand Years (where he says that the pair would have been more consistent with their own methodology if they didn't totalize capitalism) speaks less to the limits of D&G, than it does to De Landa.
Nonetheless! Despite all of this, A Thousand Years is still an absolute corker of a book, with a ton to learn from. In particular, De Landa's reconstruction of the mechanism of 'double articulation', so central to the D&G's "Geology of Morals" chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, is still among the best and most useful in all of the voluminous secondary literature written on the topic. That De Landa has been able to take that model and 'apply' it to, quite literally, a thousand years of history, and provide example after example, is no mean feat. Most people can't even supply a single one, let alone a book-length treatment of it. So, shortcomings or no, this still remains a model for how philosophy might intersect with history, across an astonishing variety of scales. If one keeps in mind its limits, this is still very much worth the read.
What happens when history is treated as a matter of flows? Flows of rocks, of people, microbes, languages, food, and money? Flows that accelerate and decelerate, intensify and extensify, coagulate and stratify, catalyse and come to a halt? Well, Manuel De Landa’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History is what happens. This is history, but not as you know it: not class struggle, not great men, not events, and still less even nation-states; De Landa instead tracks, as it were, inputs and outputs, all the ingredients that go into making the Grand Events of history, but ingredients that usually fall far below and above the thresholds of what captures our given attention.
Hence its ‘nonlinearity’: De Landa’s history is equally a history of scales (how do you get from rocks to mountains? From cities to states?), as much ‘horizontal’ across time (‘what’ happened), as ‘vertical’ through time (‘how’ it happened). And it’s in the way that this ‘how’ is shared across time and scale, that constitutes the philosophical interest of this book. Indeed De Landa’s opening sentence runs: “this is not a book of history, but a book of philosophy”. And it is so to the extent that the history within - of which there is plenty, almost too much - testifies to the philosophy, exhibits it in a way rarely done, with a degree of erudition and learning that verges on the superhuman.
Just consider the scope of this thing: broken up into three sections, on economics, biology, and linguistics - De Landa reads as though fluent in all three, not only synthesising but also intervening among an ocean of literature, so as to carve out his own distinctive spot amongst it all. The ‘thousand years’ that he covers - from roughly 1000AD to 2000AD - is itself a story of what he calls ‘intensification’: with natural flows accelerating, expanding, and setting off new flows, which in turn, do the same. To take just one example of the innumerable many within, De Landa charts how the intensification of trade was itself relayed in the dynamics of colonialism and conquest, fed into the explosive era of the industrial revolution, and transduced into the enormous sloshy flows of fast finance that governs so much of the economy today.
And that’s just in the ‘economics’ third of the book! But if that’s the kind of story he tells ‘across’ time, then what about ‘through’ it? Well here does the philosophical accent really pick up, with De Landa leaning into the use of the tools from dynamic systems theory on the one hand, and the work of the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari on the other, to specify the various mechanisms, shared across all three domains, that generate these movements of intensification. Dubbed ‘structure-generating processes’ or ‘engineering diagrams’, the stake of De Landa’s book is to show that these processes are, in fact, the same - identical even - among all the disparate scales and times that he looks at, showing them to be at work regardless of the domain examined.
Think about that for a moment: this means that geology, economics, life, and even culture are all governed by the same mechanisms which drive their long-term dynamics, and De Landa here is making the claim to have found - or at least, to be relaying the finding of - those mechanisms! This is real big picture stuff, and the intrigue of A Thousand Years is in the convincing and meticulous way in which De Landa works to substantiate his thesis. Is it successful? Within limits, I think yes. De Landa’s is a coldly mechanical look at history, and there’s no doubt that the mechanisms he outlines do the work he says they do. But what they are not, is exhaustive.
§2: Commentary
Politics, for instance, is given short shift here, and one is more likely to find De Landa talking about the 'crossing of thresholds between stable state attractors', rather than say, struggle and achievement. In the one mention of the French Revolution that is found here, De Landa is concerned with… the language of the time. But more than just a quibble about pathos, this leads to curious oversights - as with De Landa’s buying into (the very 90s-00s) trope that states are ever more on the wane, and that globalisation would see a decline in their capacities for the exercise of power. This, in turn, follows from De Landa’s overly schematic way of assessing organization - as either a matter of ‘meshworks’ or ‘hierarchies’ and the sliding scale between the two. Roughly: a matter of less or more formalised organization and homogenisation, with De Landa exhibiting a marked but qualified preference for the former and its heterogeneity.
This kind of ‘left-libertarian’ impulse - which is, to be fair, far more implied than made explicit - feeds into De Landa’s quibble with Marxist accounts of history: ‘capitalism’ for De Landa is far too ’totalizing’ a lens to examine history, and, following the work of historian Fernand Braudel (whose writing on the longue durée of history is unsurprisingly central to A Thousand Years), De Landa prefers instead to see capitalism as merely one more mode of social organization working alongside others. To which one wants to add: it sure is, but as any account of capitalism shows, part of its perniciousness is the way in which is parasitises upon those other modes of organization all the better to entrench itself (think here of housework and carework, notorious for their status as unacknowledged support beams of capitalist reproduction). Totalization and differentiation can't simply be treated as poles to measure organization by.
But confined, as it were, to the two parametric measures of ‘heterogeneity’ and ‘homogeneity’ (parameters which are naturally lent by the effort to view history by means of systems theory), these kinds of dynamics simply ‘slip through’ the otherwise rich conceptual apparatus that governs A Thousand Years. And if, in dealing with the State and with capitalism - arguably among the two most pressing topics of concern for today - A Thousand Years cannot find firm footing, then one can’t but help be suspicious of the utility of this approach to history. To continue a little bit, De Landa's allergy to speaking about capitalism extends right down to his vocabulary. At some point in the book, he simply stops calling it capitalism and - again following Braudel - refers to it instead as a matter of 'anti-markets', in that capitalism for him is a matter of consolidation and monopolizing, such that the heterogeneity of market players are suppressed for the sake of just a few.
But to anyone who has borne witness to the hopping-mad proliferation of market-logics into every possible sphere of life, under the auspices of a capitalism in its flowering, neoliberal mode, to speak of capitalism as 'anti-markets' is its own brand of madness. In this, De Landa basically falls on the side of contemporary apologists who, blaming capitalism's ills on a pathologized 'crony capitalism' gone off the rails, hope instead for a capitalism kept a little better in check, accorded its own its own plot in the wider garden of socio-economic organization. But, as Deleuze and Guattari themselves understood - following Marx - the only limit to capitalism is capitalism itself, which otherwise corrodes every effort to circumscribe it here and there. De Landa's effort to ward this off by claiming to 'correct' D&G in the conclusion to A Thousand Years (where he says that the pair would have been more consistent with their own methodology if they didn't totalize capitalism) speaks less to the limits of D&G, than it does to De Landa.
Nonetheless! Despite all of this, A Thousand Years is still an absolute corker of a book, with a ton to learn from. In particular, De Landa's reconstruction of the mechanism of 'double articulation', so central to the D&G's "Geology of Morals" chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, is still among the best and most useful in all of the voluminous secondary literature written on the topic. That De Landa has been able to take that model and 'apply' it to, quite literally, a thousand years of history, and provide example after example, is no mean feat. Most people can't even supply a single one, let alone a book-length treatment of it. So, shortcomings or no, this still remains a model for how philosophy might intersect with history, across an astonishing variety of scales. If one keeps in mind its limits, this is still very much worth the read.
February 9, 2020
This was not a piece of cake. DeLanda looks at the history of the last millennium in a highly philosophical, structuralistic kind of way, with the use of a very elaborate terminological toolkit. I appreciated his plea to look at history from a nonlinear point of view (Prigogine), without a manifest destiny, as the result of intensively interactive processes on multiple levels. And I particularly appreciated his stress on cities as laboratories where historical processes are accelerated (Braudel). But the very theoretical approach and the constant use of structuralist terminology (in line with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari) was not my cup of tea; on top of that it was my impression that DeLanda’s view just is a sophisticated version of materialism. See also my review under my historical alias: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
November 11, 2021
190619 from 170113: i was sure i reviewed this, as it is certainly my favorite history text. by memory, then, six years reading later, i offer this review if no direct quotes. this is sort of opposite the ‘linear’ model of historical change, as presented in the ‘great man’ theory, or the ‘grand narrative’ theory. this is an application of nonlinear dynamics where slightest alteration in initial conditions can lead to radically different outcomes. weather is iconic example, the famed butterfly flapping its wings in the amazon causally influences thunderstorm in Kansas...
‘great man’ is the idea such and such would not have happened without this particular individual, this being maybe king or queen or leader or warrior or religious figure or... degenerates into hero-worship or irremediably bad press on memory or gradually forgotten civic holidays... ‘grand narrative’ suggest an ‘author’ of meaningful ‘plot’, cast backwards from the present, as if the way things happened is the only way things could have happened... both theories strain credulity the more historical chronicles read... and the arbitrary effect of slight alterations...
here, linear history is affected by such alterations, not just to the ‘great man’ but all those thousands and millions who prosecute directives given from these powers above, as well these might be done. little things happen. planning must be flexible. big things surprise. wait. run. stop. start. there is no obvious or apparent pattern here, this book only guides you to surf the breaks, does not tell you, does not know, when is the next surprise... this is fun. i gave this book to dad, at that time working on fractals and nonlinear dynamics etc in physics, but he found the history distracting. said, as far as ‘nonlinear etc’, that’s not physics, that’s not even wrong... but then he qualified his doubts and said, well, he does not follow it all, though it looks interesting. so, maybe the theory is shaky: but i love this book...
‘great man’ is the idea such and such would not have happened without this particular individual, this being maybe king or queen or leader or warrior or religious figure or... degenerates into hero-worship or irremediably bad press on memory or gradually forgotten civic holidays... ‘grand narrative’ suggest an ‘author’ of meaningful ‘plot’, cast backwards from the present, as if the way things happened is the only way things could have happened... both theories strain credulity the more historical chronicles read... and the arbitrary effect of slight alterations...
here, linear history is affected by such alterations, not just to the ‘great man’ but all those thousands and millions who prosecute directives given from these powers above, as well these might be done. little things happen. planning must be flexible. big things surprise. wait. run. stop. start. there is no obvious or apparent pattern here, this book only guides you to surf the breaks, does not tell you, does not know, when is the next surprise... this is fun. i gave this book to dad, at that time working on fractals and nonlinear dynamics etc in physics, but he found the history distracting. said, as far as ‘nonlinear etc’, that’s not physics, that’s not even wrong... but then he qualified his doubts and said, well, he does not follow it all, though it looks interesting. so, maybe the theory is shaky: but i love this book...
December 19, 2008
Typically the contemporary western world is specialized in a way that organizes various professions and institutions into vertical categories; think of them as silos. So, even though there is alot of similarity between say, the nutrition acquisition network of bees and the geographic routes taken by drug addicts when they need a fix -- the two disciplines of study never meet. This book, very provocatively written, connects many dots that typically remain dispersed. Highly recommended to thos that like history, geology, sociology and biology !
September 7, 2010
Mescaline does something to your sense of scale. You can see your mental view expand from planets to solar systems to galaxies, and find it recapitulate itself in the order of the molecules stitching together the cells in your body. You can see the emergent relationships of cells from the perspective of cultural anthropology, or look for the behavior of cultures in the mathematical expression of a whirlpool. If you understand this, then it is easiest to simply say that this book is history on mescaline, and that is all that need be said.
Of course, many could level accusations at it on account of it being "postmodern nonsense," and so on. Maybe there's something to that, but I feel I got much more from it in terms of an understanding of systems-oriented thinking than I have from any other book I've ever read. For that alone it is worth the price of entry, and the time.
This book was read for the Immanence of Myth project - http://www.modernmythology.net
Of course, many could level accusations at it on account of it being "postmodern nonsense," and so on. Maybe there's something to that, but I feel I got much more from it in terms of an understanding of systems-oriented thinking than I have from any other book I've ever read. For that alone it is worth the price of entry, and the time.
This book was read for the Immanence of Myth project - http://www.modernmythology.net
Read
March 2, 2009I fawn over Gilles Deleuze the way a 12 year old girl fawns over the Jonas Brothers. And so does DeLanda. DeLanda engages a synthesis I've long been seeking, which is to say a sensible Deleuzean materialism informed by evolutionary theory. Which, as a double major in English literature and environmental science, makes a whole lot of sense to me. I wish, though, that DeLanda had employed more material evidence beyond highly conceptual genealogies.
Want to read
November 5, 2008Amazon 2008-11-05. That cover seems engineered to make one's eyes bleed; it's the ugliest thing since Turkmenistan's flag (it is not, incidently, as ugly as the flag of the Marshall Islands).
May 27, 2013
From what I understand, the term nonlinear derives from mathematics and physics, where equations and the phenomena they represent can be categorized either as linear or nonlinear. Linear phenomena refer to those whose systems will subsist in a steady state; those whose functioning unfolds in a consistent fashion. Nonlinear dynamics refers to systems which will change state, either through positive or negative feedback mechanisms, where a system will function via an accumulative or diminutive dynamic such that general states can be switched over into new general states. As such they are processes which pertain to limit states, moments of transition and the underlying dynamics which determine them. The catalysts for these state changes are taken as deriving from the nature of the matter itself and are not then a question of intentional or unintentional processes as such but rather the self-generative conditions for the emergence of new states. While this is principally a paradigm determining the physical sciences, in this book De Landa develops it in terms of the evolution of human societies; that is, human societies can be seen to be subject to processes of the nature or positive and negative feed-back mechanisms conditioning the emergence of new steady states in societies. As such De Landa wants to develop a sociological approach, in part based in thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari which he describes as "bottom up" in contrast to manner of the older sociological approaches.
De Lanada uses this approach in relation to linguistics, biology and genetics, and economics to show how, in the case of all of these phenomena, rather than it being a case of intentional transformations which conditioned the adoption of new steady states, for example, the emergence of new languages (a language itself being a steady state but which itself contains variability in the form of dialects), it is rather a process deriving from creolization or pidginization leading to the condensation of new languages, or not, in a manner entirely consonant with the nature of the matter in question, that is language, and the selection pressures that were brought to bare upon it. In the case of economics other interesting examples which De Landa provides are the role of favorable trade winds in the case of the colonial success of Portugal, or the role of disease in the Spanish conquest of Mexico (the Spanish would not have been able to exploit Mexico to anywhere near the extent they did were it not for the diseases which they carried. The usual interpretation that the Spanish possessed an overwhelming technological advantage is no longer such a clear case).
As such De Landa in a way consonant with post-modernism is working with an idea of history not defined in terms of absolute progress but rather as being the product of the interaction of forces which in a sense exert their own control over the manner in which changes occur through out history, that is it is a mistake to view historical change merely as the intentional outcome of rational agents for instance. To think history one has to think the multiple layers of force, in a quasi geological way that intersect in the creation of moments of change and consistency.
De Lanada uses this approach in relation to linguistics, biology and genetics, and economics to show how, in the case of all of these phenomena, rather than it being a case of intentional transformations which conditioned the adoption of new steady states, for example, the emergence of new languages (a language itself being a steady state but which itself contains variability in the form of dialects), it is rather a process deriving from creolization or pidginization leading to the condensation of new languages, or not, in a manner entirely consonant with the nature of the matter in question, that is language, and the selection pressures that were brought to bare upon it. In the case of economics other interesting examples which De Landa provides are the role of favorable trade winds in the case of the colonial success of Portugal, or the role of disease in the Spanish conquest of Mexico (the Spanish would not have been able to exploit Mexico to anywhere near the extent they did were it not for the diseases which they carried. The usual interpretation that the Spanish possessed an overwhelming technological advantage is no longer such a clear case).
As such De Landa in a way consonant with post-modernism is working with an idea of history not defined in terms of absolute progress but rather as being the product of the interaction of forces which in a sense exert their own control over the manner in which changes occur through out history, that is it is a mistake to view historical change merely as the intentional outcome of rational agents for instance. To think history one has to think the multiple layers of force, in a quasi geological way that intersect in the creation of moments of change and consistency.
October 19, 2018
I read this book for a reading group, and I do not intend to finish it. Though De Landa's premise is intriguing, and though there is definite value (and need!) for a view of the development of the world outside of the category "human," the holes in De Landa's work make this not a text that I want to continue engaging in. De Landa's work does the implicit job of naturalizing hierarchies without acknowledging the systems of power that flow through the very constructed hierarchies that structure the social and political world.
Further, though De Landa claims to be continuing the genealogy of scholars who seek to explore history outside of the West, De Landa's inclusion of China and the Islamic world only serves to shore up the development of the West, and needless to say, there is a complete obliteration of Indigeneity or blackness in his work. Finally, De Landa's ultimate conclusion--that to call a culture, social system, or a world "patriarchal" or "capitalist" obfuscates reality because it does not acknowledge the "bottom-up approach"--is a conclusion that works to silence those who do the very work of addressing those systems, especially when considering the absence of reckoning with, among other structuring structures, chattel slavery and the birth of capitalism.
Ultimately, De Landa's work feels like an attempt at an anti-anthropocentric political theory without engaging with those very homo sapiens bodies that have been constructed outside of the category "human." For someone who seemingly seeks to build upon Deleuze and Guattari, De Landa really should have spent less time citing novel work from STEM fields and more time citing the basic foundations of social and political theory.
Further, though De Landa claims to be continuing the genealogy of scholars who seek to explore history outside of the West, De Landa's inclusion of China and the Islamic world only serves to shore up the development of the West, and needless to say, there is a complete obliteration of Indigeneity or blackness in his work. Finally, De Landa's ultimate conclusion--that to call a culture, social system, or a world "patriarchal" or "capitalist" obfuscates reality because it does not acknowledge the "bottom-up approach"--is a conclusion that works to silence those who do the very work of addressing those systems, especially when considering the absence of reckoning with, among other structuring structures, chattel slavery and the birth of capitalism.
Ultimately, De Landa's work feels like an attempt at an anti-anthropocentric political theory without engaging with those very homo sapiens bodies that have been constructed outside of the category "human." For someone who seemingly seeks to build upon Deleuze and Guattari, De Landa really should have spent less time citing novel work from STEM fields and more time citing the basic foundations of social and political theory.
June 28, 2007
My edition was published by Zone Books which seems to believe that games with layout and fonts are fun. They start their chapters with something like 18pt and then shrink it with each turning page until things get normal again. It’s cute on chapters 1 and 2. Less so by chapter 5. And by the time chapter 9 on Linguistic History is rolling around, downright annoying. I wanted to rip out all the 18pt pages and shove them so far up the large intestine of the layout designer that he or she would have their fill of fiber for two months. But then I’d have to kick my own big, black ass for damaging this amazing book.
Human history is a symphony and De Landa chooses to play 3 difficult instruments: biology, economics and linguistics. He flows from one logical illustration to the next without ever failing to footnote. The aforementioned final chapter of this book on linguistics was one of the most profound and insightful essays that I have ever read.
This is a hard book. It kept me up late and made my lunch breaks run long. If you read just one general history book, read Plagues and Peoples. If you read two, read this as well.
Human history is a symphony and De Landa chooses to play 3 difficult instruments: biology, economics and linguistics. He flows from one logical illustration to the next without ever failing to footnote. The aforementioned final chapter of this book on linguistics was one of the most profound and insightful essays that I have ever read.
This is a hard book. It kept me up late and made my lunch breaks run long. If you read just one general history book, read Plagues and Peoples. If you read two, read this as well.
June 11, 2007
a look at history through theme and method rather than chronological cause-and-effect.
more interesting for the way it's organized than the histories it's documenting, though those are sometimes fascinating too.
delanda shows the links connecting biological, geological, economic, and linguistic histories, explaining immigration via pathology (i.e. the way microbes come in and out of the body to effect disease), social class dynamics/formation via rock stratification, and pidgin histories by way of psychoanalysis. weird, sometimes astounding, this text (and its 100 pages of footnotes) won't help your pub trivia scores let alone in everyday life. but the Technicolor-Dreamcoat cover sure looks good on a bookshelf.
more interesting for the way it's organized than the histories it's documenting, though those are sometimes fascinating too.
delanda shows the links connecting biological, geological, economic, and linguistic histories, explaining immigration via pathology (i.e. the way microbes come in and out of the body to effect disease), social class dynamics/formation via rock stratification, and pidgin histories by way of psychoanalysis. weird, sometimes astounding, this text (and its 100 pages of footnotes) won't help your pub trivia scores let alone in everyday life. but the Technicolor-Dreamcoat cover sure looks good on a bookshelf.
Read
December 25, 2021got punked by DeLanda
November 21, 2019
Video review next week
March 15, 2022
de landa definitely bit off more than he could chew here. while his framings are interesting they fail to convince with his selection of sources (perilously eurocentric in matters of history, scientistic rather than scientific for biology) and too often to compensate he resorts to an ad hoc aesthetic selection of elements with poorly justified (if at all) agential capacity. it also doesn’t help that he uses a conception of marxism that at the time of writing (and long after the brenner debate) had been rejected in, and supplanted by the works of many anglo-american marxists.
February 9, 2008
In some ways this book is a gloss on Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus." The author also relies heavily on Fernand Braudel, and Foucault (although "Discipline and Punish" is the only work he cites). (There was one mention of Wallerstein that was rather dismissive, although he did seem to use his concept of the refeudalization of Eastern Europe in the early modern period). So the book was a good read for me as I'm familiar with much of the above material.
That being said, you don't have to be familiar to follow the arguments in this book. Indeed, I'd recommend reading this before A Thousand Plateaus if you're thinking of tackling that one (I'd probably get more out of it if I reread it now). The explanation of the negative and positive feedback dynamics is clear, as is their application to the historical contexts (physical, genetic, and linguistic development in Western Europe and the "neo-Europes" it created over the last millenium). Check it out.
That being said, you don't have to be familiar to follow the arguments in this book. Indeed, I'd recommend reading this before A Thousand Plateaus if you're thinking of tackling that one (I'd probably get more out of it if I reread it now). The explanation of the negative and positive feedback dynamics is clear, as is their application to the historical contexts (physical, genetic, and linguistic development in Western Europe and the "neo-Europes" it created over the last millenium). Check it out.
April 27, 2013
A Thousand Years of NonLinear History is a must read for anyone remotely interested in cylical or systems thinking. To approach the history of mankind with the same model as a scientists approaches a thermodynamics problem could be one of the most ingenious ideas I've read to date. De Landa walks you (through myriads of systems storytelling) into the philosophical world of Lavas and Magmas, Flesh and Genes, and Memes and Norms on a quest, not for optimum efficiency or evolutionary fitness, but for a moment or two of balance between the phase shifts that are our historic eras. In my opinion, every scientist, designer and thinker should read this book - if only for the priveledge of following the thoughts of such a well-learned man.
Check out some of my favorite quotes, ideas and the loads of references I'll be reading up on my blog.
Check out some of my favorite quotes, ideas and the loads of references I'll be reading up on my blog.
September 25, 2019
Tl;dr: For Foucauldians only.
I wish this book was what it purports to be, i.e.: a discussion of a 1,ooo year history of material flows informed by chaos theory propositions.
Unfortunately the argument it makes is that: in terms of cities, genetics and linguistics, the world has become more homogenous.
If you accept this argument before reading you may find the book to be a collection of various evidences for the proposition and a rewarding discursive tour of a wide range of related subjects.
I don't accept that argument and therefore found it to be an unconnected bundle of assertions with little throughline and no evidence.
Also, it not deep enough in subject matter to justify this level of verbosity.
I wish this book was what it purports to be, i.e.: a discussion of a 1,ooo year history of material flows informed by chaos theory propositions.
Unfortunately the argument it makes is that: in terms of cities, genetics and linguistics, the world has become more homogenous.
If you accept this argument before reading you may find the book to be a collection of various evidences for the proposition and a rewarding discursive tour of a wide range of related subjects.
I don't accept that argument and therefore found it to be an unconnected bundle of assertions with little throughline and no evidence.
Also, it not deep enough in subject matter to justify this level of verbosity.
February 28, 2015
I loved this one too. Delanda is amazing, unifying so many disparate fields of study under one umbrella: "...reality is a single matter-energy undergoing phase transitions of various kinds... Rocks and winds, germs and words, are all different manifestations of this dynamic material reality, or, in other words, they all represent the different ways in which this single matter-energy expresses itself" (21). I read this and feel like I really know something!
Read
March 7, 2011Is De Landa one of those PoMo intellectuals whom Sokal takes to task for dressing in logorrheic robes of difficult language what is, at heart, meaningless gibberish? I don't know, but the premise of this book is fascinating and its bright, rainbow design keeps calling to me from over in the corner where it sits flirting atop an under-read pile of modern philosophy.
December 9, 2014
A marvelous tour through the processes of change that form our world (human, physical, geologic, social, linguistic). DeLanda's powers of synthesis are amazing, and he seems to have read everything. Better still, his prose is smooth and lively.
I'll be digesting this one for a while, but at first blush it seems to have rewired me in useful ways. (How's that for a massively mixed metaphor?)
I'll be digesting this one for a while, but at first blush it seems to have rewired me in useful ways. (How's that for a massively mixed metaphor?)
December 14, 2023
Are you looking for a new parallax? Have you had enough of the milestone and invention-based narrative of history?
Second reading: You should read this roughly every five years to prevent linear and human-based historical intoxication.
Second reading: You should read this roughly every five years to prevent linear and human-based historical intoxication.
November 12, 2007
fun. maybe more then that. not sure.
May 22, 2013
Deleuze & Guattari for the common man.
Read
January 27, 2024Manuel De Landa offers an encyclopedic account that encompasses practically everything, from the flow of biomass, plate tectonics, wind currents and maritime travel, city-building, language, and many others. Describing his work as a "historical survey of these flows of 'stuff' as well as the hardenings" before they return to the flow that "constrain them in many ways," the work rests heavily on Deleuze and Guatarri's obsessions with accumulation, coagulation, and sedimentation.
For instance, he described urbanization as the "mineralization" of human activity. He described rivers as "hydraulic computers" that sort rocks into layers of defined strata. Thus, what we call a "rock" or a "language" or a "species" is simply an instantiation of "stuff" in a very specific moment, whose existence is not determined by a single determinant. It is a fascinating work of incredible depth, written in an accessible language.
The "non-linearity" that is crucial to de Landa's work refers to the impossibly complex ways that flows react to one another. This led to him asserting, rather predictably, that "linear" models of interpreting history such as classical Darwinism or Marxism, cannot suffice to explain phenomena within the context of a non-linear dynamisms.
He even went so far as to drop a scandalous bomb:
"From the perspective of a bottom-up methodology, it is incorrect to characterize contemporary societies as "disciplinary," or as "capitalist," or, for that matter, "patriarchal" (or any other label that reduces a complex mixture of processes to a single factor), unless one can give the details of a structure generating process that results in a societywide system."
While posing as a radical reading, de Landa's agenda of conceptualizing reality into a dense "meshwork" of unfathomably complex operations somehow reminds me of the classic idealist metaphor of Zeno's paradox: if the distance between A and B can be divided infinitely, why is the distance betwen these points not empirically finite? If things are infinitely complex, how is it that we are able to do comprehend at least some part of it?
This work's new materialist slant is decidedly anti-teleological. Here's a lengthy quote that sums up his 'experimental' approach which, I claim, ironically elevates his materialism into a kind of metaphysics:
"All these precautions are necessary in a world that does not possess a ladder of progress, or a drive toward increased perfection, or a promised land, or even a socialist pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Moreover, these warnings derive from a recognition that our world is governed not only by noninear dynamics, which makes detailed prediction and control impossible, but also by nonlinear combinatorics, which implies that the number of possible mixtures of meshwork and hierarchy, of command and market, of centralization and decentralization, are immense and that we simply cannot predict what the emergent properties of these myriad combinations will be. Thus the call for a more experimental attitude toward reality and for an increased awareness of the potential for self-organization inherent in even the humblest forms of matter-energy."
While I find an enormous value in De Landa's microscospic virtuosity in creating these spurious relationships between "stuff" and flow, his conclusions are burdened with same idealist opacity of Deleuze and Guatarri's portrait of phenomena, and even of the more recent 'new materialist' philosophies. It is empirically impossible (perhaps even he will agree) to craft a model of history that can capture everything in its entirety, but we nonetheless try, not simply because we aim to understand the world, but because we are IN the world and are in a relationship with it. Thought is changed not simply by flipping a few knobs inside the brain, but through praxis, and praxis requires us to look for actionable patterns in reality which we can change. We practice our existence through action, or else we freeze into a state of traumatic shock and nihilism.
It's true that opening ourselves up to "non-linearity" also opens us up to limitless imagination and chaos. But I insist on creating and improving on models that try to make sense of phenomena from the position of our factual engagement with it, rather than be enthralled to passivity by the sublime enormity of the task of world interpretation.
For instance, he described urbanization as the "mineralization" of human activity. He described rivers as "hydraulic computers" that sort rocks into layers of defined strata. Thus, what we call a "rock" or a "language" or a "species" is simply an instantiation of "stuff" in a very specific moment, whose existence is not determined by a single determinant. It is a fascinating work of incredible depth, written in an accessible language.
The "non-linearity" that is crucial to de Landa's work refers to the impossibly complex ways that flows react to one another. This led to him asserting, rather predictably, that "linear" models of interpreting history such as classical Darwinism or Marxism, cannot suffice to explain phenomena within the context of a non-linear dynamisms.
He even went so far as to drop a scandalous bomb:
"From the perspective of a bottom-up methodology, it is incorrect to characterize contemporary societies as "disciplinary," or as "capitalist," or, for that matter, "patriarchal" (or any other label that reduces a complex mixture of processes to a single factor), unless one can give the details of a structure generating process that results in a societywide system."
While posing as a radical reading, de Landa's agenda of conceptualizing reality into a dense "meshwork" of unfathomably complex operations somehow reminds me of the classic idealist metaphor of Zeno's paradox: if the distance between A and B can be divided infinitely, why is the distance betwen these points not empirically finite? If things are infinitely complex, how is it that we are able to do comprehend at least some part of it?
This work's new materialist slant is decidedly anti-teleological. Here's a lengthy quote that sums up his 'experimental' approach which, I claim, ironically elevates his materialism into a kind of metaphysics:
"All these precautions are necessary in a world that does not possess a ladder of progress, or a drive toward increased perfection, or a promised land, or even a socialist pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Moreover, these warnings derive from a recognition that our world is governed not only by noninear dynamics, which makes detailed prediction and control impossible, but also by nonlinear combinatorics, which implies that the number of possible mixtures of meshwork and hierarchy, of command and market, of centralization and decentralization, are immense and that we simply cannot predict what the emergent properties of these myriad combinations will be. Thus the call for a more experimental attitude toward reality and for an increased awareness of the potential for self-organization inherent in even the humblest forms of matter-energy."
While I find an enormous value in De Landa's microscospic virtuosity in creating these spurious relationships between "stuff" and flow, his conclusions are burdened with same idealist opacity of Deleuze and Guatarri's portrait of phenomena, and even of the more recent 'new materialist' philosophies. It is empirically impossible (perhaps even he will agree) to craft a model of history that can capture everything in its entirety, but we nonetheless try, not simply because we aim to understand the world, but because we are IN the world and are in a relationship with it. Thought is changed not simply by flipping a few knobs inside the brain, but through praxis, and praxis requires us to look for actionable patterns in reality which we can change. We practice our existence through action, or else we freeze into a state of traumatic shock and nihilism.
It's true that opening ourselves up to "non-linearity" also opens us up to limitless imagination and chaos. But I insist on creating and improving on models that try to make sense of phenomena from the position of our factual engagement with it, rather than be enthralled to passivity by the sublime enormity of the task of world interpretation.
July 13, 2017
Was never totally sure what was happening. Had a great time, though.
"In a very real sense, reality is a single matter-energy undergoing phase transitions of various kinds, with each new layer of accumulated "stuff" simply enriching the reservoir of nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear combinatorics available for the generation of novel structures and processes. Rocks and winds, germs and words, are all different manifestations of this dynamic material reality, or, in other words, they all represent the different ways in which this single matter-energy expresses itself. Thus, what follows will not be a chronicle of "man" and "his" historical achievements, but a philosophical meditation on the history of matter-energy in its different forms and of the multiple coexistences and interactions of these 21 forms. Geological, organic, and linguistic materials will all be allowed to "have their say" in the form that this book takes, and the resulting chorus of material voices will, I hope, give us a fresh perspective on the events and processes that have shaped the history of this millennium."
"But if a set of rules is not the source of the combinatorial productivity of language, then what is?" I worry about these things as well. This book was cool.
"In a very real sense, reality is a single matter-energy undergoing phase transitions of various kinds, with each new layer of accumulated "stuff" simply enriching the reservoir of nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear combinatorics available for the generation of novel structures and processes. Rocks and winds, germs and words, are all different manifestations of this dynamic material reality, or, in other words, they all represent the different ways in which this single matter-energy expresses itself. Thus, what follows will not be a chronicle of "man" and "his" historical achievements, but a philosophical meditation on the history of matter-energy in its different forms and of the multiple coexistences and interactions of these 21 forms. Geological, organic, and linguistic materials will all be allowed to "have their say" in the form that this book takes, and the resulting chorus of material voices will, I hope, give us a fresh perspective on the events and processes that have shaped the history of this millennium."
"But if a set of rules is not the source of the combinatorial productivity of language, then what is?" I worry about these things as well. This book was cool.
October 24, 2017
I initially read this book some years ago. I recall it taking me a long time, and unevenly so, with some pages dragging on for months, and other pages coming by much faster; rapidities and slowness appropriate to this book of historical dynamics. Yet, at the end, certain ideas (from the poorly retained intermingling of the book and online lectures) maintained such a compelling originality, power, and clarity to lead to its designation as a favorite, a book that had amazed me and was very influential in my thinking.
The occasion of this review is a partial second reading, skipping the section on linguistics, as this reading was made as part of a study of a particular set of questions. Upon a second reading, "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" is more suggestive than descriptive (and necessarily so given the intellectual quicksand it's trying to build upon, as we shall see). Yet, the points made are so suggestive as to be worth entertaining anyway.
The primary concept is that within history, viewed from the perspective of the material flows and accretions that develop, we can see certain abstractions of processes ('abstract machines') that are also common to physical phenomena: thus a physical understanding is vital to seeing dynamics within history. Simultaneously, the behavior of large systems is path-dependent, and understanding their physical dynamics requires understanding their history.
In this volume, the two most prevalently stated abstract processes are 'autocatalytic' networks ('meshworks', 'self-consistent aggregates') and sedimentation processes ('strata', 'hierarchies', or processes of sorting permanence which generally act as negative feedback). The first are arrangements of positive feedback leading to changing dynamics, while the second are processes of sorting and crystallization, that lead to consolidated dynamics. As an example of these forces, the book contrasts the historical roles of Amsterdam, a coastal city of trade and commerce, from Paris, a landlocked city of administrative and social power.
There's the claim that these 'abstract machines' can be distinguished by sharing a similar 'engineering diagram' for these processes, though these diagrams are never given in such a way that would allow one clearly to tell whether a particular system shared that diagram or not. In this reading, I think this vagueness is deliberate, a means of avoiding 'a stratification of meaning', instead seeking to keep these matters in a state of suggestiveness. Having said that, the claim that these 'abstract machines' aren't merely metaphorical suffers under this vagueness.
Given the intellectual pedigree of this book, this approach seemingly must follow. Manuel De Landa is philosopher working with the material the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who seems not to have created so much a philosophy as network of related, partially-consistent philosophies, in line with the logic of the philosophy itself. Therefore, not only is this book literally about a thousand years, but it is also titled as a homage to "A Thousand Plateaus", the work it most strongly borrows from.
Yet, despite this deliberate conflation, the phenomena under discussion always seem clear. Manuel De Landa is on a tightrope, giving himself the personal mandate to explain historical matters in clear metaphors despite a deliberately shifting foundation. As an example of such a metaphor, consider mineralization: the development of bones leads to a variety of new body plans available to evolution, while similarly the development of the built environment of cities lead to new possibilities for social arrangement.
What does this philosophical history then assert has happened over the past thousand years? In short, geological and economic intensification and the development of new technological 'autocatalytic' cycles at the cost of biological homogeneousness and stratification, with a key intensification of those processes around the industrial revolution. The dissipation of positive reinforcement, with coal and iron leading to networks of railroads, but also to electrical networks, and the vast variety of appliances and devices employed in those networks today.
The development of these energy networks is an example of the so-called 'double articulation', through which some sedimentations ('content') then lead to the possibilities of a profusion of new arrangements ('expression'). For example, the content of standard plugs, voltages, and frequencies of electricity allow an expression in devices. For a natural example, the genetic arrangements for transmitting heredity then allow for the evolution of a variety of species. This also applies to symbolic systems, as the specification of a programming language allows for a variety of programs.
The book seems to take a positive view of 'autocatalytic' developments and a more negative view towards hierarchical ones, in line with "The Geology of Morals", a chapter of "A Thousand Plateaus". I'm not so sure. I think the tendency to see meshwork or hierarchy hides the true dynamics of intensification, a proliferation of both kinds of dynamics in a way that is actually mutually reinforcing. There might be a particular sedimentation that allows certain autocatalytic loops to operate without being slowed by negative feedback. For example, the sedimentation of particular economic arrangements might not be allowing us put a halt on more intensive energy usage, but yet that sedimentation may be sustained from the energy of that use.
Overall, I think the theory itself needs a sedimentation, so that it can be better expressed to truly capture dynamics beyond simple loops in a descriptive way, to actually say useful things about the dynamics of our history over the past thousand years. It's a suggestive start.
The occasion of this review is a partial second reading, skipping the section on linguistics, as this reading was made as part of a study of a particular set of questions. Upon a second reading, "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" is more suggestive than descriptive (and necessarily so given the intellectual quicksand it's trying to build upon, as we shall see). Yet, the points made are so suggestive as to be worth entertaining anyway.
The primary concept is that within history, viewed from the perspective of the material flows and accretions that develop, we can see certain abstractions of processes ('abstract machines') that are also common to physical phenomena: thus a physical understanding is vital to seeing dynamics within history. Simultaneously, the behavior of large systems is path-dependent, and understanding their physical dynamics requires understanding their history.
In this volume, the two most prevalently stated abstract processes are 'autocatalytic' networks ('meshworks', 'self-consistent aggregates') and sedimentation processes ('strata', 'hierarchies', or processes of sorting permanence which generally act as negative feedback). The first are arrangements of positive feedback leading to changing dynamics, while the second are processes of sorting and crystallization, that lead to consolidated dynamics. As an example of these forces, the book contrasts the historical roles of Amsterdam, a coastal city of trade and commerce, from Paris, a landlocked city of administrative and social power.
There's the claim that these 'abstract machines' can be distinguished by sharing a similar 'engineering diagram' for these processes, though these diagrams are never given in such a way that would allow one clearly to tell whether a particular system shared that diagram or not. In this reading, I think this vagueness is deliberate, a means of avoiding 'a stratification of meaning', instead seeking to keep these matters in a state of suggestiveness. Having said that, the claim that these 'abstract machines' aren't merely metaphorical suffers under this vagueness.
Given the intellectual pedigree of this book, this approach seemingly must follow. Manuel De Landa is philosopher working with the material the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who seems not to have created so much a philosophy as network of related, partially-consistent philosophies, in line with the logic of the philosophy itself. Therefore, not only is this book literally about a thousand years, but it is also titled as a homage to "A Thousand Plateaus", the work it most strongly borrows from.
Yet, despite this deliberate conflation, the phenomena under discussion always seem clear. Manuel De Landa is on a tightrope, giving himself the personal mandate to explain historical matters in clear metaphors despite a deliberately shifting foundation. As an example of such a metaphor, consider mineralization: the development of bones leads to a variety of new body plans available to evolution, while similarly the development of the built environment of cities lead to new possibilities for social arrangement.
What does this philosophical history then assert has happened over the past thousand years? In short, geological and economic intensification and the development of new technological 'autocatalytic' cycles at the cost of biological homogeneousness and stratification, with a key intensification of those processes around the industrial revolution. The dissipation of positive reinforcement, with coal and iron leading to networks of railroads, but also to electrical networks, and the vast variety of appliances and devices employed in those networks today.
The development of these energy networks is an example of the so-called 'double articulation', through which some sedimentations ('content') then lead to the possibilities of a profusion of new arrangements ('expression'). For example, the content of standard plugs, voltages, and frequencies of electricity allow an expression in devices. For a natural example, the genetic arrangements for transmitting heredity then allow for the evolution of a variety of species. This also applies to symbolic systems, as the specification of a programming language allows for a variety of programs.
The book seems to take a positive view of 'autocatalytic' developments and a more negative view towards hierarchical ones, in line with "The Geology of Morals", a chapter of "A Thousand Plateaus". I'm not so sure. I think the tendency to see meshwork or hierarchy hides the true dynamics of intensification, a proliferation of both kinds of dynamics in a way that is actually mutually reinforcing. There might be a particular sedimentation that allows certain autocatalytic loops to operate without being slowed by negative feedback. For example, the sedimentation of particular economic arrangements might not be allowing us put a halt on more intensive energy usage, but yet that sedimentation may be sustained from the energy of that use.
Overall, I think the theory itself needs a sedimentation, so that it can be better expressed to truly capture dynamics beyond simple loops in a descriptive way, to actually say useful things about the dynamics of our history over the past thousand years. It's a suggestive start.
March 4, 2018
'A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History' is a phenomenal application and expansion of Deleuze and Guattari's work on abstract machines and nonlinear dynamics to the diverse fields of urbanization, economics, genetic evolution, language and more. De Landa's metaphysics however is a regression from Delueuze/Guattari due to his elevation of their theories into a singular ontological model for reality, whereas the work of 'A Thousand Plateaus' is simply to add a few more strata to the existing assemblage of discourse, each conceptual framework overlapping and contradicting themselves such that the theoretical body is itself rhizomatic. De Landa's work though is brilliant and fascinating from a historical perspective, especially in his study of medieval urbanization and the evolution of capitalism.
July 31, 2020
A really, really difficult read for me. My rating could be higher if I had been able to have the mental stamina for this, but I read it during the COVID-19 pandemic and was just a bit too much for me. He contrasts human history to the physical history of the planet, and the main gist is that things aren't preordained or linear; history is a "tree with many branches," and lots of variables go into which branches will strengthen and which will wither. If you're going to read this, be prepared to put in the time. The font changes throughout are rather odd and in many places just too small, which made comprehension even more difficult for me. As for reading for pleasure, this didn't do the trick for me, I could use a Cliffs Notes version to pierce through the fog.
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