Commentators attending to relations between the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and developments in contemporary science have for the most part focused on chaos and complexity theory. To be sure, there are a number of rich cross-pollinations to be gleaned from a consideration of the frameworks of chaos and complexity theory and Deleuze’s work, as has been demonstrated by writers such as Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and Brian Massumi, amongst others.1 Indeed, these connections are not simply adduced ‘after the fact’. Deleuze is cited as an influence in the first work to catalyse chaos theory as such, Order Out of Chaos, by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers. Equally, Deleuze recognised the resonance of chaos theory with his own work. In a discussion of ‘inexact yet completely rigorous notions’2 which are capable of crossing disciplinary boundaries, he says: ‘One of the many concepts created in [Order Out of Chaos] is that of a region of bifurcation. Prigogine draws it out from his own field, but it’s a good example of a concept that’s irreducibly philosophical, scientific and artistic too.’3 We might note a further such transdisciplinary instance in Deleuze and Guattari’s co-option of Mandelbrot fractals in elaborating the term ‘smooth space’ (ATP, 486–7).

It is a moot point, in short, how far we might go in aligning Deleuze’s work with the fields of chaos and complexity, all the more so since the general spirit of his thought is far from precious over the co-habitation of the philosophical apparatus with promising concepts and modes of thought in the mathematical and natural sciences. I would argue, however, that there are points in the commentary on Deleuze which exceed productive cross-pollination with these particular fields in the direction of too close an identification.