Machinic phylumis a term coined by French post-structuralist philosophers Deleuze and Guattari to describe the universe’s reservoir of self-organising principles. They reason that whenever a crystal grows, a foetus begins to develop or someone stumbles across a novel idea something or someone has accessed this omnipresent reservoir and sampled a code.

Everything that evolves is tapping into a universal storehouse of potential. Life (or rather, self-organisation), in terms of the machinic phylum (or simply, the Phylum), is ubiquitous and non-specific. As an emblem of patterns, principles, potentials and cosmic revelations, the Phylum is as much a pool of designs as it is a collection of intensity maps and catalytic energies.  It is a useful (and somewhat trippy) metaphor for the processes at work in a world awash in quantum physics and chaotic probalities. Just as readily, the Phylum presents itself as the answer to the problem of finding unity, consilience and holism in the increasingly fragmented social and scientific paradigms of the early 21^st century.

The notion of an over-arching family (or phylum) to which everything in the universe belongs – from minerals to weather-patterns, solar systems and biological organism – is revolutionary. It suggests that intelligence and sophisticated pattern-perception is not unique to humans (or even biological life-forms), but rather is something that infiltrates and infuses everything in the universe. As Deleuze & Guattari see it, all matter – from metals to cells and hurricanes - resonates and vibrates on some basic frequency level, drawing its self-organisation from a universal chalice. The specific structure of an atom, its chance collision with another atom and subsequent novel reorganisation in a material structure or form is, according to Deleuze & Guattari, dictated by none-other than the Phylum.  Humans, in turn, can aid in the process of reorganising a particular expression of the Phylum (in a laboratory or forge, for example) by tapping into the very same universal reservoir and sampling yet another engineering diagram.

The number of structural diagrams stored in the Phylum is potentially infinite as the Phylum is itself the sum of all the resonances, vibrations and frequencies across all dimensions and timespaces. Can we therefore call the Phylum God? The answer, according to Deleuze and Guattari is a resolute NO. This isn’t a question of pre-destination or even free will … there are no simple answers. Does any of this make sense? The less sense it makes, the better, claim Deleuze and Gauttari; in order to make sense of anything in the universe we have to let-go of any preconceived notions and destratify …

We stumble onto inspiration when we least expect it - at a chance-juncture or in a twilight state when we are gripped by a hallucination or simply falling asleep. Whether it’s the apple that hit Newton on the head, Einstein’s day-dream or Dr Hofmann’s bicycle ride, the Phylum awaits us when we’ve momentarily forgotten what we were so involved with or simply given up on ever finding an answer. It’s written in our genes and in the complex (yet-blindingly-simple) tapestry unfolding around us.  The air itself is filled with the whisperings of the Phylum, as are the rocks, trees, insects and artificially constructed machines all around us.

As our technologies grow more sophisticated they too are beginning to tap into the Phylum in order to evolve lineages of their own. Cultural-critic Kevin Kelly explains: “As we unleash living forces into our created machines, we lose control of them and they acquire some of the surprises that the wild entails.” Soon the world of the made will begin to resemble the world of the born - autonomous, adaptable, and creative but, consequently, out of control.

In tracking the Phylum we are following in the footsteps of the ancient engineers of chaos – shamans and sorcerers.  Like them, we have to become the mythographers and cartographers of novelty. There is simply no choice involved – already the accelerated shifts of our irresponsible dabbling (i.e. the rabid advances of technological consumerism) is being mapped on our bodies and on our environments. It’s simply a matter of survival: our continued evolution requires that we abandon ourselves to the reservoir of possibilities represented by non-linear dynamics and become supplicants at the altars of consilience, holism as well as cause and effect.

According to Manual de Landa our task, like that of the shamen, is to become responsible probe-heads that explore the Phylum in a search for new modes of being.  Expressing the dynamics of a new paradigm will entail a ceaseless and brave journey, climbing from one strange attractor to another as we track the Phylum in search of a better destiny for humanity.

* Essential reading on the subject of the Phylum include Manual De Landa’s A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History or Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Science-fictional explorations include Neal Stephenson’s Diamond-Age and Tricia Sullivan’s Dreamers in Smoke.