The enchantment of the virtual
In Chapter 1, "The Enchantment of the Virtual" Châtelet works through and beyond Aristotle's distinction between the virtual and the actual by way of Leibniz. Modern mathematics, he suggests, gives us a virtuality that is not subordinate to the actual but co-constitutes it as a generative force. (A Deleuzian diagram perhaps?)
Rather than the Aristotelian mode in which the virtual seeks fulfillment in its actualization, for Châtelet the virtual resists closure, and works as a gestural inventiveness. Likewise, mathematical abstraction is not, a la Aristotle, a stripping away of mobile content for stable form, but a kind of condensation of experimental gestures and problems.