Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects

In this chapter, Deleuze investigates the first manifested paradox that results from the paradox of pure becoming.

To get there (heavily citing Stoic philosophy), he contrasts "bodies" (actual things) and "incorporeal effects" (the ideational).

The most important axiom he delineates here is that the ideational or incorporeal is always an effect, never a cause (p.7). This is extremely, extremely important. When you are having paranoia, and you think that your thoughts are incarnating terrible things in the world, this is a fallacy as the ideational is but an effect of the corporeal (e.g. your brain's biology).

The paradox here is that becoming, which we talked about in the last post, is both indivisible and infinite, yet at the same time always on the surface, always an effect of the mixture of actual things ("bodies"). How could something unlimited also be a surface effect? A good example would be a pot of boiling water. As heat is delivered to the pot, the water molecules undergo chemical changes, the result of which can be seen at the surface of the water. It would be mistaken to say that the events at the surface of the water are their own cause -- they are an effect of the chemical changes of the water molecules. As the water boils, it is impossible to measure the exact changes of the surface as the ripples are coextensive with the entire surface; conversely one could try to measure the development of water into ice, but crystallization happens at an edge that is impossible to define. It is at the limit, at the edge, that we find transcendence from the corporeal to the incorporeal or ideational.