Lie structures in homotopy and isotopy calculi

We establish compatibility of Lie structures that appear in homotopy calculus of functors and isotopy calculus of embeddings. On one hand, we give a new proof of the Johnson–Arone–Mahowald result describing the layers of the Goodwillie tower of the identity functor, and we directly compare the spectral Lie bracket with the classical Samelson (Whitehead) bracket on spaces. On the other hand, we geometrically define a bracket on the layers of the embedding calculus tower for embeddings of arcs. These results are unified through the same technical tool, a newly defined bracket on total homotopy fibres of collapsing cubes of wedge sums. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Derived Lie algebras in geometry and topology’.