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Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information

by Gilbert Simondon

Publisher’s Summary

A long-awaited translation on the philosophical relation between technology, the individual, and milieu of the living From Democritus’s atomism to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, from Aristotle’s reflections on the individual to Husserl’s call for a focused return to things, from the philosophical advent of the Cartesian ego and the Leibnizian monad to Heidegger’s notion of Dasein, the question concerning the constitution of the individual has continued to loom large over the preoccupations of philosophers and scholars of scientific disciplines for thousands of years. Through conceptions in modern scientific areas of research such as thermodynamics, the fabrication of technical objects, gestalt theory, cybernetics, and the dynamic formation at work in the creation of crystals, Gilbert Simondon’s unique multifaceted philosophical and scholarly research will eventually lead to an astounding reevaluation and questioning of the historical methods for posing the very question and notion of the individual. More than fifty years after its original publication in French, this groundbreaking work of philosophical theory is now available in its first complete English language translation.

Notes

5 more than a unity or identity
6 indiviudation (ID) is mediation
9 social is higher order metastability (cf. Spinoza)
10 knowledge generated by problematics, not sensation
11 information as relation that spurs ID
13 failure of classical logic
- def. transduction
14 transduction is "mental procedure"
17 ID of knowledge is knowledge of ID
22 technical operation required to rbing form to matter
28 clay "takes" form in communication with worker; doesn't "receive" form from the mold
30 hylemorphism is the knwoledge of a technical object by someone who is outside the workshop
32 ID ends in equilibrium
33 decacy sets in when ID finishes
35 representation of technical ID is candidate for knowledge of virtal ID (cf. 17)
38 tool-use is also about reading matter through signals in the tool
40 ex. pores of wood
41-3 implicit forms
- ex. statistically predictable implicit forms
42 technical operation integrates implicit forms
44 workers vs. bosses
47 singularities exist in an inter-zone
- individual is an *activity* of a relation
53-4 critique of Spinoza and Leibniz
56 Potential Energy (PE) as exemplar for study of ID
- PE is virtual, not just possible; relation in itself, not substance
- relation vs rapport
57 ID requires "true relation"
68 strucutral PEs as formal conditions of possible geneses
- crystals show ID prior to substance, quality, and quiddity
70 ID operates as a state modification, not identity
- history
71 complete ID = exhaustion of PE
72 lesson of physical ID is not the *types* of individuals, but the infinity of individuals that can come from one structural *type*
73 particular beings never belong to types
74 active consistency
75 form = macro
   matter = micro
75-6 against correlationsim: being is a relation, and our knwoledge of it is a relation to this relation, so we can learn about relation by studying our own knowledge of being
76 epistemological postulate
- "approximate knowledge" as metastable version of "exact knowledge"
77 thought = relation with historical aspect
85 properties are relational, not substantial
87 goal of the study
- an epistemology anterior to any logic
93 ID creates a system, not substance
97 ancient physics was too often driven by ethical motives
- Christianity "liberated" physics by providing a "non-physical foundation to ethics"
107 veritable analogy = identity of rapports, not rapport of identity
- difference, not resemblance
108 transductive method = application of veritable analogical reasoning
- scientific thought as distribution, not classification or identification
109 ex. transductive method = discovery of electromagnetic spectrum
110 def. general individual
- "allagmatic epistemology"
111 not dialectics
- domains of thought are horizontal, not hierarchical
116 ex. real analogy = light as electromagnetic wave
118 ex. TV
120 psychosocial vs. transductive view of TV
121 analogy not resemblance
- topology not hierarchy
131 Becoming is integrated in Being
- limit of interiority is limit of being, i.e. relation
132 against interiority and monads
152 PE **exists**
- ID qua ID is such only by relation to non-individuated real
- "Relation always exists as potential"
- relation = energetic exchange
153 against Descartes
158 photon =/= individual
- condition of veritable individual
159 individual is not simultaneous to itself
- substance vs physical being
160 preindividual is first reality
163 quantum vs. substantial difference
- viruses
- single vs. multiple input beings
164 vital ID is *slower* than physical
- neoteny of animal/plant life
167 methological postulate for vital ID
- quantum measure, not quantity
- vital unit can be discrete individual or a group
168 vital individual is mortal
169 real analogy vs. inductive classification
170 complex organisms have less integrative potential
171 information in physical vs. biological individuals
172 automoton vs. vital being: latter has capacity for transduction
173 "most conspicuous biological transduction" = reproduction
- vital growth/reproduction is not physical since it "combines with speciated individuality"
176 aestheticism
177 psychical is a "slowing down" of ID
- not "higher arrangement" but a "new plunge into preindividual reality"
178 malformed psyche
182-4 against Freud
- types of "death"
185 not dialectics
- "evolution is a transduction"
- heredity
196 Weismann's germ-plasm
199 final position on regeneration vs. reproduction
209 individual is act, not being
- both result and agent
- hereditary substance
- recapitulation (neoteny)
210 criterion of individual functional autonomy is hereditary substantiality
211 "the regime of information [...] defines the degree of individuality"
212 individuality is marked by: a type of act or event with the possibility of reaction, and an autonomous zone that permits it
222 becoming other
223 polarity
- living is what reproduces itself
225 energy in the living vs. inert
226 constructive vs. peaceful equilibrium
236 "To live consists in being agent, milieu, and element of ID"
237 no pure interiority
238 entropy of successive IDs
240 entelechy = collective ID