1000 DAYS OF THEORY
Biophilosophy for the 21st Century
There have only ever been three approaches to thinking about life: SOUL, MEAT, and PATTERN. Within this trinity is everything deemed to be animate,
living, and vital. 'Soul' is not just the Scholastic, theological, personal soul, but the Aristotelian principle of life (psyche), the
principle of its organization. The vegetative soul of plants, the animate and sensate soul of animals, and the rational soul of human beings. The
hierarchy of souls is not unlike the Great Chain of Being, a biological theology of divide-and-hierarchize. By contrast, 'meat' is brute matter,
unthinking mechanism, the clockwork organism, the bête machine described by Descartes -- animal or machine, it makes no difference. Mechanism
is, in a sense, a thinking about life as meat, and meat as lifeless (the life that is lifeless is meat or machine). Finally, distinct from 'soul' and
'meat' is a third approach, that of 'pattern.' It would seem that the emphasis on pattern is a distinctly postmodern phenomenon, the terrain of
cybernetics, information theory, self-organization. But this is only part of the story. Again, Aristotle the biologist equates form (eidos) and
'soul' as the distinguishing mark between the plant, the animal, and the human; it is in their mode of organization, how they self-actualize in time
('if it moves, it's alive'). Yet, Aristotle is linked to contemporary self-organization research in that neither can explain how organization occurs,
other than to reiterate that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Thus, 'soul,' 'meat,' and 'pattern' form a trinity. The trinity is also a triptych: soul in the center, meat on the right-hand side, and on the
left, pattern. An image of thought that continuously switches, swaps, displaces, and replaces the place-holder that defines life: from psyche
to mechanism and animal electricity to the 'gemmules' and 'pangens' to DNA and the 'code of life.' However, these three approaches do not form a
periodization, with Aristotle's psyche followed by Descartes' clockwork body followed by the genetic code. Instead, as a trinity-triptych, they
form a kind of portrait, a face, a faciality, a field of black holes and white walls, within which and upon which is often written: 'life is that
whose essence can be deduced and yet whose essence escapes all deduction.' Soul-meat-pattern. Each of these posits a central, universal, external
principle of organization that culminates in the living, the organism, a life-force. We can simply refer to this as the principle of life, the
central concept that structures a whole field of investigation. Each approach differs in its place-holders, but there continues to be a transcendental
locus that minimally guarantees a description of life, something that enables one to point and say 'over there...' (or perhaps, 'it's alive...alive!'
or again, 'shoot anything with more than two legs!'). In positing such principles of organization, the soul-meat-pattern triptych also articulates
boundaries: living-nonliving, organic-inorganic, animate-inanimate, but also animal-machine, human-animal, human-savage, species, races, populations,
genomes... We can refer to this practice as boundaries of articulation. Together, the principle of life and the boundaries of articulation are
the two methods through which the West has ceaselessly reinvented its thinking about life.
There is an inward-turning and an outward-turning aspect of this thinking. The inward-turning divides, orders, and interrelates species and types;
the outward-turning manages boundaries and positions the living against the nonliving, making possible an instrumentality, a standing-reserve. The
inward-turning aspect is metabolic, in that it processes, filters, and differentiates itself internally; it is the breakdown and production of
biomolecules, the organization of the organs, the genesis of species and races. The outward-turning aspect is immunologic, for it manages boundaries,
exchanges, passages; it is the self-nonself distinction, the organism exchanging with its environment, sensing its milieu, the individual body
living in proximity to other bodies. Nevertheless, there is always something that complicates both aspects. The inward-turning aspect is just fine
until the outward-turning aspect loses its grip on things. An example is epidemics. An epidemic cannot be limited to the individual organism, for its
very nature is to pass between organisms, and increasingly, to pass across species borders (and national borders). What is the unit of analysis for an
epidemic? Likewise, the outward-turning aspect is able to manage boundaries without problem until the inward-turning aspect is discovered to be an
illusion. For instance, if the outward-turning aspect is that which posits the individual organism as distinct from its environment, therefore
enabling an instrumental relationship, a standing reserve, what then is the inward-turning aspect? We would assume it is the whole spectrum of
understanding about that organism -- its biological, physiological, cognitive processes. But isn't each of these really a nested, outward-turning
aspect in itself? What are the systems, networks, and pathways of the organism if not nested layers of the outward-turning aspect? The inward-turning
and outward-turning aspects thus complicate each other ceaselessly, and it is therefore not inaccurate to describe their relationship, as Deleuze
does, as one of folding (in-folding, out-folding, an embryology having nothing to do with 'development').
Soul-meat-pattern. Again, this is not a telos, as if to imply that genetic and information technologies are the most advanced mode of
inward- and outward-turning. Yet, in a time of networks, swarms, and multitudes, it would seem that the third approach -- that of 'pattern' -- is
today dominant in the life sciences (genetics, genomics), health care (biotech industry), technology (a-life, AI, networks), war (bioterror, emerging
epidemics) and even alternative scientific viewpoints (biocomplexity, emergence) . A new, vital pattern
pervades systems of all kinds -- global economies, social systems, immigration patterns, information exchanges, mobile and wireless communications,
and so forth. Despite this, have we rid ourselves of the divide-and-hierarchize mentality of thinking about life? Is 'pattern' simply the new 'soul'?
Traditionally, these questions about the principle of life come under the domain of the philosophy of biology. But what would it mean to invert the
philosophy of biology? What would it mean to invert this thinking (soul-meat-pattern) and this dualistic method (principles of life, boundaries of
articulation), and consider instead a biophilosophy? Perhaps it is precisely 'life itself' that is the problem, not the aim or the goal.
Instead of considering the intrinsic properties of life, what about considering life as extrinsic, as always going outside of itself? Instead of
centering life (an essence, an organizing principle), what about considering life at the peripheries? Extrinsic life, a life always going
outside of itself, peripheral life...
Biophilosophy vs. Philosophy of Biology
What, then, is biophilosophy? To begin with, biophilosophy is not the same as the philosophy of biology. What is usually referred to as the
philosophy of biology has both a syntagmatic and a paradigmatic side to it, a horizontal and vertical dimension to it. The horizontal dimension is the
elucidation of universal characteristics of the organism which are perceived to be part of its essence or principle of organization (growth and decay,
reproduction and development, evolutionary adaptation). The vertical dimension is the development of this thinking historically in Western thought,
from Aristotle, to natural history, to Darwinian evolution, to the new synthesis in genetics and biochemistry. In general, the philosophy of biology
highlights and extends the philosophical dimensions of biological knowledge. Issues pertaining to evolution, biological determinism, dualism,
mechanism, and teleology may be considered in the context of the life sciences such as comparative anatomy, physiology, genetics, biochemistry,
embryology, germ theory, developmental systems theory. The philosophy of biology informs the three approaches to thinking about life mentioned above:
soul-meat-pattern. The philosophy of biology also undertakes the twofold method of identifying a principle of life and boundaries of articulation. It
can be understood as an attempt to pose the question 'is the living different from the non-living?' -- an ontological question -- in the context of
another question, 'is the study of the living (biology) different from other fields of study?' -- an epistemological question.
Is biophilosophy simply the opposite of the philosophy of biology? Not quite. Biophilosophy is certainly a critique of the triptych of philosophy
of biology. But it is also a way of moving through the soul-meat-pattern approach, while taking with it the radicality of the ontological questions
that are posed, and which often get reduced to epistemological concerns over classification. Whereas the philosophy of biology is concerned with
articulating a concept of 'life' that would describe the essence of life, biophilosophy is concerned with articulating those things that ceaselessly
transform life. For biophilosophy, life = multiplicity. Whereas the philosophy of biology proceeds by the derivation of universal
characteristics for all life, biophilosophy proceeds by drawing out the network of relations that always take the living outside itself. An extrinsic
diagram as opposed to intrinsic characteristics. Whereas the philosophy of biology (especially in the 20th century) is increasingly concerned with
reducing life to number (from mechanism to genetics), biophilosophy sees a different kind of number, one that runs through life (a combinatoric,
proliferating number, the number of graphs, groups, and sets). Whereas the philosophy of biology renews mechanism in order to purge itself of all
vitalism ('vitalism' is one of the curse words of biology...), biophilosophy renews vitalism in order to purge it of all theology (and in this sense
number is vitalistic).
'A life' not A-life
The difficulty with the philosophy of biology -- as with nearly all philosophical thinking of 'the animal' -- is to resist the anthropomorphism of
our thinking about life. The approach of the philosophy of biology, the approach of soul-meat-pattern, centers and raises up the concept of the human
so that it is not only isomorphic with life, but so that it may rise above life ('life itself' as the pinnacle and 'mere life' as the base or
foundation). This has a number of effects on our thinking about life, for it simultaneously places the human at the top of the Great Chain while also
reserving a qualitatively distinct, non-animal place for the human. This is the tired drama of the human, at once partaking of the animal, natural,
biological world, and yet incessantly striving above and beyond it, producing abstract knowledge-systems, constructing world and life, aspiring for
the spiritual (recall Heidegger's thesis concerning animality: the stone is worldless, the animal is poor-in-world, and the human is world-building).
It is a drama that is by turns tragic and absurdist. Contemporary bio-art practices can be understood as a commentary on this drama, producing dadaist
mammals, extra ears, pigs with wings, activist crops, and 'fuzzy biological sabotage' .
Biophilosophy implies a critique of all anthropomorphic conceptions of life. But is it possible to think this nonanthropomorphic life? Are we
determined to yet again supplant a new term ('multiplicity') for an old one ('pattern')? The problem is not simply a nominalist one, not simply a game
of logic; the problem is the very relation between 'life' and 'thought' (both Canguilhem and Foucault note that the most accurate concept of
life would be life itself). Biophilosophy is an approach to nonhuman life, nonorganic life, anonymous life, indefinite life -- what Deleuze calls 'a
life.' But the trick is to undo conventional biological thinking from within. Biophilosophy focuses on those modes of biological life that
simultaneously escape their being exclusively biological life: microbes, epidemics, endosymbiosis, parasitism, swarms, packs, flocks, a-life, genetic
algorithms, biopathways, smart dust, smartmobs, netwars -- there is a whole bestiary that asks us to think the life-multiplicity relation.
Life is X
The central question of the philosophy of biology has to do with an essence of life, a 'principle of life.' What is life? Life is X -- whatever X
happens to be, eidos, mechanism, life-force, selection, code. The concept of 'life itself' promoted by geneticists during the post-WWII era
(the genetic 'coding problem') was a renewal of a concept articulated by Aristotle in De anima as well as his 'biological' treatises. The
implication of the very concept of 'life itself' is that 'life' is One. Whatever it is, life is one thing, essentially one thing, for otherwise we
could not say 'Life is X.' Even when life reveals its contradictory nature, that contradiction is the ineffable key to life. An example is animal
motility. Aristotle posed the question 'what makes the animal go?'; that is, from where does its energy come? The problem was picked up by the
application of thermodynamics to animal physiology, with talk of animal 'electricity' and 'irritability' and 'vital forces.' Soon there was an
ineffable 'life force' coursing through the animal, enabling it to counter the laws of thermodynamics.
Today a similar process is happening with studies in self-organization and emergence. The question has changed, but its form of the problem is the
same: 'how do simple local actions produce complex global patterns?' The effects of self-organization can be analyzed forever (e.g. 'ant colony
optimization') and they can be applied to computer science (e.g. CG in film, telecommunications routing). But a central mysticism is produced at its
core, for if there is no external, controlling factor (environment, genes, blueprints) then how can there be control at all? Again, 'life itself' the
ineffable, the absent center. In this sense life follows the laws of thought: it is self-identical (whatever is living continues to be so until it
ceases to be living), non-contradictory (something cannot both be living and non-living), and either is or is not (something either is or is not
living, there is no grey zone to life). It is in this sense that 'life' and 'thought' find their common meeting point. Biophilosophy implies a
critique of the dialectics of 'life itself.' It abandons the concept of 'life itself' that is forever caught between the poles of nature and culture,
biology and technology, human and machine. Instead it develops concepts that always cut across and that form networks: the molecular, multiplicity,
becoming-animal, life-resistance...But the point is not to simply repeat deleuzianisms, but rather to invent or diverge: the autonomy of affect,
germinal life, wetwares, prevital transductions, organismic soft control, abstract sex, molecular invasions, geophilosophy, and what Deleuze calls
'the mathematico-biological systems of differenc/tiation' .
Being, Time, Number
The philosophy of biology is an epistemological endeavor, while biophilosophy is an ontological one. The philosophy of biology asks 'which
category?', while biophilosophy asks 'affected or affecting?' Biophilosophy ceaselessly spins out ontologies, none of them final, none of them
lasting. An example: perhaps what Heidegger pointed to as the defining philosophical concern of modernity -- Being or dasein -- has permutated
into one of the guiding concerns of the new millennium -- the problematic of 'life itself' or the zoe/bios distinction. We are no longer
worried about the grand metaphysical concerns of Being, Time, and the One. Biophilosophy is a permutation and transmutation of these concerns: not
Being but the problematic of 'life itself', a concern that asks us to rethink the concept of the vital and vitalism. Similarly, the concern with Time
has become an interest in variation, transformation, change -- difference and repetition (the repetition of the different and the difference of each
repetition). The contemporary interest in the event, becoming, and the virtual-actual pair are further variations of this. Finally, the imperative of
the One -- that Being is One, that Time is One, that the subject is singular, that identity is the identification of the One, even the strange
sameness of the Other in ethical thought -- all of this asks us to pose the question: what would we have to do to the concept of 'number' to think
beyond the One-many dichotomy? This is the question posed by Deleuze's Difference and Repetition, but it is already there in Plato's
Parmenides. Hair, mud and dirt. Is there a concept of multiplicity that moves beyond the One-many? Could such a concept resist a simple
denunciation of 'number' (quantity vs. quality, extensity vs. intensity, explication vs. implication). If there is a concept of number that runs
throughout multiplicity (a proliferative, pervasive number), and if multiplicity is related to life, is there a living number -- a vitalist
matheme -- that would move out of the philosophy of biology's trinity of soul-meat-pattern? Instead of what Badiou calls the split between the
quantitative and qualitative, the closed and the open, 'number and animal,' is there an animal number? Being, Time, and the One thus get
recombined as 'life itself,' becoming, and number, which in turn ask us to consider or reconsider vitalism, the virtual, and multiplicity.
The philosophy of biology poses the question, 'what is life?' In doing so, however, it rarely asks the inverse question, 'what is not-life?'
Certainly death is not-life. But so is the rock, the chair, the clouds. What about the computer, lunch, or a nation-state, are they not-life as well?
What about a doll? Memories? There is a whole negative classification of not-life implied in the positive question 'what is life?' Better yet, rather
than the question of what is not-life, we can pose the question of the life that becomes not-life, an other-than-life, a becoming-nonliving.
Four, preliminary examples:
- Swarm intelligence: 'Swarm intelligence' is a term currently used to describe an interdisciplinary research field that combines the biological
studies of 'social insects' with computer science (especially software algorithms and multi-agent systems) . Just as a group of insects that are individually 'dumb' are able to collectively self-organize and forage for a food source or
build a nest, so can simple software programs or robots self-organize in groups and carry out complex tasks. This local actions-global patterns
approach is said to display 'intelligent' or purposeful behavior at the global level. But we can also question and repurpose the term 'swarm
intelligence,' for the tendency in this thinking is to always search for a higher-level unity which would be the guarantee of organization and order.
Call it a 'superorganism' or a 'hive mind,' the implication is that purposeful activity can only occur through a process of meta-individualizing all
group phenomena, subjecting the many-as-many to a renewed concept of the One. Action must come after individuation, not vice-versa. However the unique
thing about insect swarms and other animal groups (packs, flocks, schools) is not just that there is no leader, but that there is something akin to a
fully distributed control. Thus the political paradox of insect societies -- how to understand this balance between control and emergence,
sovereignty and multiplicity? And thus the paradoxical question of the field of swarm intelligence -- can it be coded? Can one in fact
engineer distributed control? Or are we stuck at the level of passive observers, limited in our ability to identify swarm intelligence, but helpless
to enact it? What would have to be done to the concept of action in order to make of swarm intelligence a political concept? If there is a
swarm intelligence, the 'intelligence' would surely have to be a frustratingly anonymous, nonanthropomorphic intelligence, the intelligence of 'a
- Headless animality: The philosophy of biology is not only concerned with the unity of life ('Life is X'), but it ties this unity to the individual
organism. Whether in natural history's classifications, Darwinian speciation, or the study of genomes, biology always begins from the individual. The
individual is the starting point, the basic unit of study. Throughout all these levels, the organism has remained central. Organisms not only form
species, but they are also formed by molecules and cells; organisms are the ideal point of mediation between the microscopic and macroscopic views of
life. Thus it is no surprise to find philosophy raising the human above the animal based on the comparison of individual organisms. Aristotle,
Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau: the individual organism is the most basic unit through which the human is raised above the animal, the beast, the
savage. This is especially the case when groups are concerned. Here insects are the privileged case study, perhaps the paradigmatic case of the
not-human. Indeed, political thought has often contrasted the human and the insect precisely on this point. Hobbes notes that while both we and
insects are 'social,' only we can lay down rights to establish a sovereign; Marx notes that insects also produce and build, but humans are able to
abstract and plan before building. Thus even groups are individuals. Groups are composed of individuals that pre-exist them, and groups themselves
form meta-individuals ('species,' 'races'). But there are also extrinsic group animals, the multiplicity-animals of packs, flocks, swarms. Yes, swarms
can be understood to be composed of individual insects. But what if swarms, packs, and so on are actually inversions of the organism? What if they are
instances in which the many pre-exist the One? An army ant swarm does have a morphogenetic aspect to it: there is a swarm front, a bivouac, and
branching paths. But swarms, packs, flocks, schools are also defined precisely by their shapelessness and formlessness. They have no 'head' let alone
a 'face.' They are headless animals, acephalous animality. They are animality without head or tail, polysensory, poly-affective, 'amorphous but
- Molecular molecules: To begin with, we can suggest that molecules are not 'molecular.' As non-sensical as this sounds, it is important to
understand the molecule as one in a whole series of units of composition and analysis: the organism, the organ, the tissue, the cell, the molecule.
Each science of life is not just a noun (anatomy, biology) but also a verb ('anatomizing,' 'biologizing') in which the living is both analyzed and
built up. What is the smallest unit of composition? This is also the first unit of analysis. Building up, breaking down. The process of individuation
is central to thinking about life, whether it be about the 'building blocks of life' or the 'code of life.' There are always 'powers of ten' in
biology, a huge, ontological microscope that stratifies individuals (the 'DNA makes RNA makes proteins, and proteins make us' mantra of molecular
genetics). But what if all this has nothing to do with scale, or with strata, or with layering? There is a whole forgotten history of molecular
biology which de-emphasizes the search for 'the' molecules (proteins or nucleic acids), and instead focuses on the relationality of molecules, their
network dynamics, their temporal existence on the 'edge of chaos' (biocomplexity). On the one hand biology tells us that molecules build up and break
down (some proteins break down molecules, others build up). But on the other hand a cursory look at microbes shows us the radical horizontality of
molecules: symbiotic bacteria, contagious viruses, and horizontal gene transfer between microbes. An epidemic is molecular, but it is also social,
technological, economic, political. Networks of infection, yes, but also networks of contagion, transportation, vaccination, quarantine, surveillance.
This compression of networks, this topological intensification, is not the result of molecules, but is 'molecular.' A microbial life that has nothing
to do with scale (micro- vs. macro-), but that is at once local and global. Even the common biological processes of gene expression, cell metabolism,
and membrane signaling routinely create linkages and relations (microbe-animal-human), or rather they produce univocity-through-assemblages.
- Lifelike death: We speak excitedly about the ways that new technologies are 'life-like,' meaning the way that technology -- something devoid of
life -- is able to display characteristics or behaviors that for us approximate life. But it is never clear if the lifelike is a category of
representation (the lifelike quality of the 'oval portrait'), performance ('never mind the man behind the curtain'), or simulation ('what is real,
Neo?'). Our own obsession is to constantly desire and yet worry about the lifelike: we want our phones to speak to us, but only if they say the right
things. In popular culture, science fiction repeatedly plays out these scenarios where we produce a technical life in our own image, a fusion of
technology and life in which the human constantly reproduces itself. Perhaps another approach to the lifelike is not to do with life or technology at
all, but the lifelikeness of death. There is, in fact, a whole demonology of the lifelike to be considered. In popular culture, genre horror gives us
many examples of lifelike death: zombies (the living dead), vampires (the undead), the phantasm (the disembodied spirit), and the demon (the possessed
life). This is the lifelikeness of life passing away, going beyond itself, exiting itself. It is no mistake that these figures of lifelike death are
often inhabited by fearfully ambivalent agents: viruses infecting the living dead, the 'bad blood' of the vampire, the phantasm enslaved my memory,
and the demonic tearing of soul from body. Lifelike death is not the celebratory lifelikeness of our intelligent machines, but the ambivalent attitude
towards a life that should not be living, an unholy life. This lifelike death is aporetic life: the dead that walk, the immortal being that is also
the basest animals (bats, rats), the materialized spirit, the familiar face distorted beyond recognition. Perhaps there is a technoscientific side to
this after all. For, wouldn't the limit-case of lifelike death be the point at which the organic can no longer be distinguished from the inorganic,
the material from the immaterial? This is the domain of nanotechnology, the idea of inorganic life, programmable matter, an undiscovered 'occult
Ancient Life (or, the Biology of Cthulhu)
'Biophilosophy for the 21st century' is an ambiguous statement. Biophilosophy does not begin with information networks, biotechnologies,
nanotechnologies, or intelligent software. In a sense, Presocratic thinking is biophilosophical thinking. Heraclitus refers to a nonorganic life in
this three examples of fire (formlessness in identity), flows (stepping into the river), and the body (stability through growth and decay). A common
logos to all change. His opposite -- but in many ways his compliment -- is Parmenides, whose concept of the All-One attempts to comprehend
multiplicity as another form of univocity. And then there are the Greek atomists, particles infinitely dense and mobile...
Immediately a dissenting point is raised: 'are we not being reductive in our concept of life, as if life were only biological life, and not social,
cultural, economic, religious and political life as well?' Indeed, isn't the problem the way in which biological and biomedical life has come to be
the foundation of our emerging 'biopolitical' regimes? This 'bare life' serves as the alpha and the omega of social and political life, at once
safeguarding the security of 'the population' while also producing a state of exception, a state of emergency, in which 'bare life' is both under
attack and the object of preemptive strikes. Undoubtedly. Except that this cordons off our ability to think about life within the chess-match between
disciplines. To the scientist who says 'life is genetic code' there is the sociologist who says 'life is the discriminatory implementation of
genetics.' To the physicist who says 'life is the self-organization of matter and energy' the political scientist says 'life is the struggle between
human groups to instrumentalize natural resources.' To the humanities professor who says 'life is the set of metaphors we forget are metaphors,' there
is the engineer who designs 'programmable matter' and 'smart dust.' Once in a while, there are synergistic couplings, noisesome crosstalk that
produces monsters: in the 1980s there was talk of chaos, in the 1990s talk of complexity, and crossing the millennium talk of networks. Or so the
story goes. Perhaps we would like to do away with disciplines; and yet, for all the talk of 'third cultures' we still find the two cultures in the
most banal, everyday instances.
This not a manifesto. All the same, there are a number of misconceptions to address concerning biophilosophy. Biophilosophy is not a naïve embrace
of 'life,' a belief in the altruistic holism of all life on the planet. It is, however, a rigorous questioning of the twofold method of the philosophy
of biology (principle of life, boundaries of articulation), and the divisions that are produced from this. Biophilosophy always asks, 'what relations
are precluded in such-and-such a division, in such-and-such a classification?' Biophilosophy is not and should not be simply another name for
self-organization, emergence, or complexity. While there is a fertile exchange between philosophy and biology on this point, it is clear that the
sciences of complexity are unable to think both ontologically and politically as well. More often than not, they create a new portrait of nature (a
nonlinear, metastable, complex nature), or worse, they subsume all non-natural elements under this new nature (thus free markets and/or 'democracy'
are self-organizing and therefore inevitable). Not everything comes under the domain of biophilosophy, but at the same time one of biophilosophy's
major concerns is the supposed foundationalism of biology and the biological-biomedical definitions of life. Biophilosophy is not simply a new
vitalism, arguing for the ineffability and irreducibility of life's description. Yet this is perhaps the most frustrating and ambivalent aspect of
biophilosophy. Biophilosophy is an attempt to draw out a political ontology, and yet it is also politically agonistic, even apathetic. There is no
ressentiment in biophilosophy; only a commitment to a 'vital politics' accompanied by this 'molecular-wide' perspective. Biophilosophy picks up
and reinvigorates the ontological questions left behind by the philosophy of biology. Why 'life'?
 See my article 'Networks, Swarms, Multitudes' in CTHEORY (2004): part one
(http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=422) and part two (http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=423).
 In particular, see the work of SymbioticA (http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au), a group of artists
and scientists engaged in exploring cell and tissue culturing techniques as artistic practice. In a different vein, Critical Art Ensemble
(http://www.critical-art.net) has, for some years, explored the relationships between activism, art, and biotechnology.
 Aside from A Thousand Plateaus, see Deleuze's comments on life as 'resistance' in
Foucault, trans. Seán Hand, London: Continuum, 1999. For a sampling of other divergings from life, see Keith Ansell Pearson, Germinal
Life, New York: Routledge, 1999; Alain Badiou, "Of Life as a Name of Being, or Deleuze's Vitalist Ontology," Pli: The Warwick Journal of
Philosophy 10, 2000, 174-91; Mark Bonta and John Protevi, Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2004; Critical Art Ensemble, The Molecular Invasion, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2002; Manuel Delanda, "Immanence and Transcendence in the
Genesis of Form," South Atlantic Quarterly 96.3, Summer 1997: 499-514; Richard Doyle, Wetwares: Experiments in Postvital Living,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004; Miriam Fraser, Sarah Kember, and Celia Lury, "Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism,"
Theory, Culture & Society 22.1, 2005, 1-14; Mark Hansen, "Becoming as Creative Involution?: Contextualizing Deleuze and Guattari's
Biophilosophy," Postmodern Culture 11.1, 2000; Adrian Mackenzie, "Bringing Sequences to Life: How Bioinformatics Corporealizes Sequence Data,"
New Genetics and Society 22.3 (2003): 315-32; Lucianna Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of Desire,
London: Continuum, 2004; Luciana Parisi and Tiziana Terranova, "Heat-Death: Emergence and Control in Genetic Engineering and Artificial Life,"
CTHEORY, 2000: http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=127; Eugene Thacker, Biomedia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
 For a quick overview, see Eric Bonabeau and Guy Théraulaz, "Swarm Smarts," Scientific
American (March 2000): 72-79. For a more thorough, and more technical introduction, see Bonabeau and Théraulaz, Swarm Intelligence: From
Natural to Artificial Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
 This is the phrase often used by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in their book on military
swarming, Swarming and the Future of Conflict, Santa Monica: RAND, 2000.
Eugene Thacker is Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology.
He is the author of Biomedia and The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture.