In his article on Deleuze and biophilosophy Mark Hanson links Deleuze's work to the concerns of the biological sciences and evolution:

Though they stop short of jettisoning natural selection wholesale, D+G do significantly restrict its function, arguing (with Bergson) that selection forms a purely external principle of difference capable of operating only on constituted forms, that is, at the molar level. That such a principle cannot by itself account for the proliferation of life is well accepted by the majority of contemporary biologists and furnishes one common ground linking biological theory to D+G (and Bergson): in all these cases, some internal or vital principle of differentiation is required. D+G, however, distinguish themselves by their desire to furnish a rigorously molecular account of "evolution" (creative involution). As Ansell-Pearson has noted, the crux of Deleuze's (and later D+G's) transformative appropriation of Darwinism is the insistence (following Gilbert Simondon) that "differentiation presupposes individuation as a field of intensity" and that processes of individuation precede the constitution of individuals and thus "enjoy an independent evolution" (Germinal Life, p. 92). While individuals (organisms) might be the carriers of individual differences, they do not comprise the locus of evolutionary mechanisms: "evolution" (and later, involution) operates directly through processes of individuation.

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Posted by: Nathanael | June 30, 2006 9:08 AM