Riemann-Weyl in Deleuze's Bergsonism and the Constitution of the Contemporary Physico-Mathematical Space

• Published in: Deleuze & Guattari Studies 2015-02, Vol.9 (1), p.59-87
• Main Author: Calamari, Martin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Addition & subtraction; Appropriation; Conflict; Mathematics; Philosophy and Religion
• ISSN: 1750-2241; 2398-9777; 1755-1684; 2398-9785
• DOI: 10.3366/dls.2015.0174

In recent years, the ideas of the mathematician Bernhard Riemann (1826-66) have come to the fore as one of Deleuze's principal sources of inspiration in regard to his engagements with mathematics, and the history of mathematics. Nevertheless, some relevant aspects and implications of Deleuze's philosophical reception and appropriation of Riemann's thought remain unexplored. In the first part of the paper I will begin by reconsidering the first explicit mention of Riemann in Deleuze's work, namely, in the second chapter of Bergsonism (1966). In this context, as I intend to show first, Deleuze's synthesis of some key features of the Riemannian theory of multiplicities (manifolds) is entirely dependent, both textually and conceptually, on his reading of another prominent figure in the history of mathematics: Hermann Weyl (1885-1955). This aspect has been largely underestimated, if not entirely neglected. However, as I attempt to bring out in the second part of the paper, reframing the understanding of Deleuze's philosophical engagement with Riemann's mathematics through the Riemann-Weyl conjunction can allow us to disclose some unexplored aspects of Deleuze's further elaboration of his theory of multiplicities (rhizomatic multiplicities, smooth spaces) and profound confrontation with contemporary science (fibre bundle topology and gauge field theory). This finally permits delineation of a correlation between Deleuze's plane of immanence and the contemporary physico-mathematical space of fundamental interactions.