The role of Poincaré’s study of the celestial mechanics in the development of Deleuze and Guattari’s chaosmological thinking

Abstract

This paper explores the way Henri Poincaré’s study of the dynamic movements of celestial bodies – which announces the theory of chaos – coheres with Deleuze and Guattari’s chaosmological thinking. The paper demonstrates how topics associated with chaos theory, including the limits of quantitative solutions, phenomena of orbital resonance, fractal attractors, and Poincaré’s conception of unsolvable problems, intermingle with Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. The paper supports the idea that the lines of interference between the new scientific study of chaos initiated by Poincaré, and a chaosmological thinking, are consistent within a partly undetermined universe, or chaosmos.