In a marvelous passage from Order Out of Chaos, Prigogine and Stengers write,
However, the question remains. We know that the builders of machines used mathematical concepts– gear ratios, the displacements of the various working parts, and the geometry of their relative motions. But why was mathematization not restricted to machines? Why was natural motion conceived of in the image of a rationalized machine? This question may also be asked in connection with the clock, one of the triumphs of medieval craftsmanship that was soon to set in the rhythm of life in the larger medieval towns. Why did the clock almost immediately become the very symbol of world order? In this last question lies perhaps some elements of an answer. A watch is a contrivance governed by a rationality that lies outside itself, by a plan that is blindly executed by its inner workings. The clock world is a metaphor suggestive of God the Watchmaker, the rational master of a robotlike nature. At the origin of modern science, a ‘resonance’ appears to have been set up between theological discourse and theoretical and experimental activity– a resonance that was no doubt likely to amplify and consolidate the claim that scientists were in the process of discovering the secret of the ‘great machine of the universe.’
Of course, the term resonance covers an extremely complex problem. It is not our intention to state, nor are we in any position to affirm, that religious discourse in any way determined the birth of theoretical science, or of the ‘world view’ that happened to develop in conjunction with experimental activity. By using the term resonance— that is, mutual amplification of two discourses –we have deliberately chosen an expression that does not assume whether it was theological discourse or the ‘scientific myth’ that came first and triggered the other. (46)
It’s all here: mixtures, the materiality of discourse, intensification. How does the relation of resonance differ from other forms of causality?… If, indeed, it can be understood as causality at all? What are the conditions for the possibility of resonance? What must being “be like” in order for resonance to be possible (here Deleuze’s cone of memory or pure past comes to mind)? At the heart of analysis lies the question of resonance and amplification. Why is it that some interpretations, some interventions on the part of the analyst resonate and others do not? Lacan always emphasizes that we should not jump into interpretation too soon, that we must wait for the transference to set in. Why does it matter who speaks as a condition for the possibility of resonance? Why is it that at certain points everyone in a social milieu seems to begin talking about the same thing, as if something is in the air? I feel, for instance, that a shift has taken place in the world of philosophy and theory, that certain discourses are now dead, that a new thought is emerging. I am powerless to articulate what it is, yet a whole host of figures and issues that might have captivated me a decade ago seem to have become cold. How does this occur? So many traces to be followed.
Larval Subjects . 
July 11, 2007 at 11:46 am
“Why is it that at certain points everyone in a social milieu seems to begin talking about the same thing, as if something is in the air?” This is an idea both me and Little John have been discussing a great deal lately. Our conversations seem to perpetually return to the same, that is to a sens of mystery, of the il y a. Yet surely we have glimpsed something, perhaps a trace of the impossibility of knowledge. Nevertheless there appears to be a trace which is somewhat visible in its absence, otherwise why do, as you so aplty say, social milieus concern themselves with one conversation as if something is palpable.
How this occurs I am unsure, for I am convinced that the trace will never lead anywhere, but a continual trace which signals the impossibility of recognising the time of time’s absence, the place where perhaps this change truly occurs.
Great post, made me think a great deal. Many thanks for your link and recent comment on our blog, we greatly appreciate it!
July 11, 2007 at 2:00 pm
For Prigogine emergent order is still deterministic, isn’t it? Though structures emerge that are qualitatively different from their precursors, the process by which the transformation occurs is repeatable and can be described mathematically.
From Prigogine: By using the term resonance– that is, mutual amplification of two discourses –we have deliberately chosen an expression that does not assume whether it was theological discourse or the ’scientific myth’ that came first and triggered the other.
I presume, though, that Prigogine would say that these two discourses determined each other. He’s moving beyond linear determination into co-determination — something like force fields, or perhaps the interactions of multiple vectors. So too a vector of desire as it inscribes itself on a surface: what actually gets inscribed is codetermined by properties of the desire and of the surface, as well as by the angles of intersection. Something like that?