Collective Self-organization in General Biology: Gilles Deleuze, Charles S. Peirce, and Stuart Kauffman

Stuart Kauffman’s proposal in Investigations to ground a “general biology” in the laws of self-organization governing systems of autonomous agents runs up against the methodological problem of how to integrate formal mathematical with semantic and semiotic approaches to the study of evolutionary development. Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the virtual and C. S. Peirce’s system of existential graphs provide a theoretical framework and practical art for answering this problem of method by modeling the creative event of collective selforganization as both represented and practiced in the scientific community.