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3. - Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2026

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Summary

Chaos appears there, spontaneously, in the order, order appears there in the midst of disorder. We will assuredly some day have to abandon this so negative label, which implies that we are thinking only in terms of an order.

Michel Serres

In his work Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson was concerned to establish a distinction intended to definitively dispel an illusion relating to order, and its inverse, disorder. An illusion which bore directly on the remit of science as it had developed over the long course of its history since the Greeks, an illusion fostered by the mathematisation of physical processes and the concomitant spatialisation of time. The distinction intended to dispel this illusion was to be understood as subtending all other criteria for differentiating order from disorder, and indeed to collapse that very distinction itself.

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  • Order
  • Bill Ross
  • Book: Order and the Virtual
  • Online publication: 04 March 2026
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  • Order
  • Bill Ross
  • Book: Order and the Virtual
  • Online publication: 04 March 2026
Available formats
×

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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Order
  • Bill Ross
  • Book: Order and the Virtual
  • Online publication: 04 March 2026
Available formats
×