Fourth Series of Dualities

Deleuze spends this chapter expanding on the duality between the corporeal (things, states of affairs), and the incorporeal (e.g. propositions, ideations). Signifier/signified can also be opposed here if that is helpful. Sense runs the frontier between these two halves. It is a "line of articulation of their difference." (24) [my emphasis] And when Deleuze says difference, I take that literally. I mean that if we take things and propositions, signifiers and signifieds, as two functions serially distributing points in n-dimensional space, sense is something like the first derivative, the dy/dx of the combined function. Deleuze references Humpty Dumpty as this conduit or point of interchange between the two sides; he sits on a wall; Deleuze speaks of him as "the impenetrable master of the articulation of their difference." (25) Humpty Dumpty is an egg, the symbol of pure undifferentiated (no arms, no legs inside, etc.) becoming, a liquid of pure intensity encased in a fragile shell, the DNA code of something as yet unknown; he is a gap or aleatory point capable of differentiating between the two sides; speaking on the "impenetrability" and "temper" and duality of words: "I can manage the whole lot of them." (25) DNA is not an arm or a leg -- it is merely the code by which to differentiate. This is the being and function of sense.

Page 26: "The two dimensions...are organized in two series which converge asymptotically...they meet one another at the frontier which they continuously stretch." [my emphasis] That frontier is where Humpty Dumpty sits, it is becoming, it is unmeasurable Aion, it is sense.