Crowds

Abstract

THE MATHEMATICIAN is tossing fitfully in his bed, talking in his sleep. He was up late talking with his friend the philosopher, and now he is dreaming. Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse watches him, worried. In the morning she calls in Doctor Bourdeu for a consultation. She has noted down her friend’s ravings and, looking for reassurance, reads them to the doctor. “Have you ever seen a swarm of bees leaving their hive? … Have you seen them fly away and form at the tip of a branch a long cluster of little winged creatures, all clinging to each other by their feet? This cluster is a being, an individual, a kind of living creature.” To Mlle. de l’Espinasse’s dismay, instead of trying to help the delirious patient, Doctor Bourdeu takes the ball and runs with it (Fig. 1.1). “Do you want to change the cluster of bees into one individual animal?” he asks. “Soften the feet with which they cling to one another, that is to say make them continuous instead of contiguous. Obviously there is a marked difference between this new condition of the cluster and the preceding one, and what can this difference be if not that it is now a whole, one and the same animal, whereas before it was a collection of animals? All our organs… are only distinct animals kept by the law of continuity in a state of general sympathy, unity, identity.” (Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream, pp. 168–170).