Definition of Epicycles

What are Epicycles?

Epicycles are emergent cycles (minor systems) that arise from existing cyclical systems but develop their own autonomy and agency (Gary Tomlinson). They are not simply new components within a system, but novel processes that separate from their originating conditions to form their own self-organizing dynamics. An epicycle when it stabilizes and becomes a distinct entity can additionally have the power to recursively shape the very systems from which it emerged (see feedforward processes).

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At the heart of this concept is a recognition that creativity and innovation aren't linear processes of ideation followed by implementation, but rather complex, distributed, emergent processes where novel arrangements gain their own momentum and transformative power.

‍Epicycles and Creative Practices

Epicycles emerge via a combination of refusing existing logics, practices, and propensities (see blocking). And the experimental development of an exaptive ecology (a “thicket”) that both actively refuses the given and co-opts it towards qualitatively new novel possibilities. This involves practices of threshold seeking and invention (a threshold of qualitative change). 

Consider how the world around us is filled with nested, self-reproducing ecosystems – culture, education, transportation – stable cycles looping and self-reinforcing through habits, practices, skills, concepts, discourses, and institutions. Within these stable systems, experiments continually emerge. Most are simply reabsorbed, but occasionally, something coalesces and stabilizes outside the main cycle, gaining functional emergence with its own techniques, tools, and practices converging into new propensities.

An epicycle is a novel world-in-the-making. It can exist within a larger system or outside of the system. This is where epicycles become truly fascinating for creative practice. As a novel arrangement of tools, practices, environments, and embodiments stabilizes, it can begin to operate with relative autonomy from the systems that generated it. Then, astonishingly, this emergent epicycle begins to exert its own transformative pressure on those original systems (see Feedforward).

‍Another Way to Think About Epicycles

Rather than seeing innovation through essentialist models like trees, pyramids, or icebergs-which suggest singular origins and linear progress-epicycles help us understand change as distributed, relational, and emergent. Innovation isn't about isolated genius or heroic individuals imposing ideas on passive matter. It's about participating in and nurturing the self-organizing propensities of complex systems.

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Epicycles are not just loops; they are creative loops that stabilize emergent effects, which, in turn, stabilize the networks that produced them. The dragon eating its tail, as it were - a strange ouroborian loop of co-creation where the emergent effects transform the components of the network.

‍Features of Epicycles in Creative Processes

What makes epicycles particularly powerful for understanding creativity is their ability to cross thresholds of qualitative difference. They aren't simply incremental improvements within existing paradigms but represent genuine ontological novelty; new ways of being alive.

Key features of epicycles include:

• Emergent autonomy: They gradually develop their own internal coherence and stability
• Self-organizing dynamics: They establish their own patterns and regularities
• Transversal movement: They connect and integrate elements across different domains
• Distributed agency: They aren't driven by single actors but by relational configurations
• Feedforward agency: They influence originating systems while maintaining their distinctness

‍Practical Implications of Epicycles for a Creative Practice

Understanding epicycles fundamentally shifts how we approach innovation. Rather than seeking to identify "winners" early or narrowing possibilities toward a single solution, we might instead focus on building fertile ecosystems from which multiple approaches can emerge, gain a collective agency, and co-create a qualitatively new “system” that exceeds any one of the players' understanding or agency.

This means:

1. Creating conditions for cross-pollination between diverse experiments
2. Allowing autonomy while encouraging sharing and visibility
3. Embracing "failure" as contributing to the broader ecosystem through transversal movements
4. Supporting multiple parallel approaches rather than prematurely converging on apparent solutions
5. Deliberately block key aspects of existing systems' logics
6. Attending to the stabilization of novel arrangements as they begin to form their own coherence
7. Developing collective threshold sensing/creating practices

The practical challenge becomes how to sense when an epicycle is forming, how to support its autonomy without collapsing it back into existing patterns, and how to allow it to develop its own feedforward agency.

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Epicycles in Action: The Wright Brothers and Beyond

The development of flight offers a perfect illustration of epicycles at work. While conventional narratives center the Wright brothers as heroic inventors of the airplane, a more accurate understanding sees them as contributors within a vast emerging ecosystem.

By 1919, barely fifteen years after their first flights, the Wright brothers had stopped making planes entirely. Their specific approach-wing warping-couldn't scale and was replaced by entirely different control mechanisms. Meanwhile, across the globe, similar propensities were emerging simultaneously: someone in New Zealand was developing a single-wing flap system, others in France were working on different approaches, all without direct communication.

What was actually happening was the emergence of an epicycle - a new world of flight forming outside existing transportation systems. This epicycle gradually gained autonomy and infrastructure: airports, companies, business models, technologies. Eventually, this stabilized epicycle of air travel began to exert feedforward pressure on the entire transportation system, transforming how humans move across the planet.

The true innovation wasn't the singular invention by isolated geniuses, but the co-emergence of a new world with its own internal logic and external transformative power. The epicycle of flight, once stabilized, changed everything around it while maintaining its own distinct identity.

In this way, epicycles remind us that creativity isn't about solving problems to return to stability, but rather about worldmaking – inventing problems worth having for worlds worth making. The most powerful innovations don't simply fit within existing frameworks; they become new frameworks that reshape everything around them.

Sources & Connections to Explore: A Million Years of MusicCulture and the Course of Human Evolution Gary Tomlinson, Power/Knowledge Michel Foucault, Political Affect Life War Earth John Protevi

See: Assemblages, Dispositif, Feedforward