Productive Difference

Reality can be understood as being shaped by differences between certain physical quantities that result in productive change:

• Heat travels from high-temperature to low-temperature
• Low density oil floats in higher density water
• A pressure drop along a pipe results in flow

Each of these quantities — temperature, density, pressure — are intensive, meaning that their magnitude is independent of their size.

The idea that these gradients of intensity play an important role in shaping reality was used by the philosopher Manuel DeLanda in his Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, a book in the philosophy of science heavily influenced by Deleuze and Spinoza.