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Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (Volume 1)
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.
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.
440 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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539 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 18, 2022
For many reasons this is a great book. However, there is a lot here that requires some extensive understanding of classical philosophy and biology at the time of Simondon's writing. It requires a lot of rereading and historical interpretation to understand that largely Simondon's problematic is somewhat simple at its core. When going "backwards" to find a functional metaphysics of mind and matter which enables distinctions between things, he has to justify the reason for this among the massive amount of physicalism and physiological work that had been done before him. Because of this, the argument required a lot of complications due to the massive synthesis Simondon wished to achieve.
That said, there are many times here when simplification not only could have been helpful, but at times was necessary to understand the argument. Simondon often jumps from one paradigm of communication to another as if there is a communication of terminology when this is not so clear to the reader. In doing this, much of the argument that begins each subsection feels like repeated non sequitur. However, in most cases I tracked down, this is not a fair assessment. It is just an uncommunicated synthesis that Simondon presumes the reader can interpret. Because of this uncommunicated synethesis, often at times Simondon will make arguments like, 'Is this term from field A the same as this other term from field B? As it happens, we don't know... but if I were to negotiate them...' which leads me to have to track down a long dead rabbit trail in order to see if his negotiation actually holds up at the start of almost every major section in the book. In many cases, arguably, it does not appear hold up. Or alternatively only under a tacit metaphysics that Simondon was not necessarily intending to accept does it continue to be upheld. I'm afraid at times that death of the author is real with this work, and that cheapens Simondon's project unless it is exclusively interpreted by his contemporaries and immediate philosophical progeny.
Another annoyance is the fact that almost all of the terms borrowed here begin as first approximations of the fields which he interprets them from. This work undeniably, is a grand project of synthesis. It won't be until other philosophers pick up this work until it really finds its value.
I think a summary of much of the work here will be functional for the average reader who, for example, only wants context for why Deleuze makes use of certain ideas from Simondon instead of others, or for cultural evolution in sociology, anthropology, etc. This book should only be read in detail by those that wish to use Simondon's ideas directly.
That said, there are many times here when simplification not only could have been helpful, but at times was necessary to understand the argument. Simondon often jumps from one paradigm of communication to another as if there is a communication of terminology when this is not so clear to the reader. In doing this, much of the argument that begins each subsection feels like repeated non sequitur. However, in most cases I tracked down, this is not a fair assessment. It is just an uncommunicated synthesis that Simondon presumes the reader can interpret. Because of this uncommunicated synethesis, often at times Simondon will make arguments like, 'Is this term from field A the same as this other term from field B? As it happens, we don't know... but if I were to negotiate them...' which leads me to have to track down a long dead rabbit trail in order to see if his negotiation actually holds up at the start of almost every major section in the book. In many cases, arguably, it does not appear hold up. Or alternatively only under a tacit metaphysics that Simondon was not necessarily intending to accept does it continue to be upheld. I'm afraid at times that death of the author is real with this work, and that cheapens Simondon's project unless it is exclusively interpreted by his contemporaries and immediate philosophical progeny.
Another annoyance is the fact that almost all of the terms borrowed here begin as first approximations of the fields which he interprets them from. This work undeniably, is a grand project of synthesis. It won't be until other philosophers pick up this work until it really finds its value.
I think a summary of much of the work here will be functional for the average reader who, for example, only wants context for why Deleuze makes use of certain ideas from Simondon instead of others, or for cultural evolution in sociology, anthropology, etc. This book should only be read in detail by those that wish to use Simondon's ideas directly.
February 20, 2025
A highly entertaining book that doesn’t hold back while dissecting chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology at a non-superficial level to show that there is a plurality of being that is not the plurality of the parts.
Simondon will say that the species makes no sense without the genus which needs the species to exist. The separation from the integration of the divergence is confounded with all potential arches (basic entities). Leibnitz’s monads never exist except in relation to everything else, and Spinoza’s substance is never ultimately differentiated beyond the whole. He’ll quote Abelard ‘nominalism for the knowledge of terms, realism for the knowledge of relation’ and Simondon explictely universalizes that aphorism in this book.
Simondon upends Hegel’s dialectic by not utilizing the law of the excluded middle. I noticed I had just recently read Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory and I said that Bergson provided content to Kant’s “thoughts without content are empty,” through making time a lived time through duration. In this book Gilbert Simondon explicitly refutes Bergson’s duration as insufficent and gives the concept to Kant’s “intuitions without concepts are blind” by giving the form a transductive (his word) existence.
Obviously, Dasein is Simondon’s focal point and our ability to think, interact with others, evolutionary development, moral development, God relationship, and Gestalt psychology as the telos for our entelechy (his word, realization of potential) and they motivate his presented theory. I discovered this book through a highly favorable footnote in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense and Deleuze treads some of the same territory that is presented in this book in that book and also in his book Difference and Repetition .
Cybernetics plays a role in this book. The concept of feedback and recursion ordering the now through its output generating its input is not alien to Simondon’s themes especially when he speaks about information theory, I should have also included information theory in my first sentence in this review. That just illustrates how deep this book is.
You know that old snappy aphorism “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” of course, it’s not true, while Simondon negates the ontogenesis itself and will say the individual is not known through its species and the species doesn’t define the individual.
As with Deleuze when Simondon speaks about his Gestalt or Jungian psychoanalysis, I just ignore it as mostly mumbo-jumbo. The certainty of sexual identity he proposes is out of step with today’s thinking, for example. The development of a mass of divergent feelings often at odds giving rise to who we are as a Gestalt (shape, form) are relevant for today.
The discussion of the dual perspective of energy as either a particle or a wave is just as relevant today. Perception giving reality through hyletics (his word, abstraction from the form) is part of Simondon’s system.
There is a lot to this book. The science is advanced and even though he wrote it in 1958 it doesn’t seem to be out of date in that department. The philosophical principles are complex and make the book a fun book to read.
Simondon will say that the species makes no sense without the genus which needs the species to exist. The separation from the integration of the divergence is confounded with all potential arches (basic entities). Leibnitz’s monads never exist except in relation to everything else, and Spinoza’s substance is never ultimately differentiated beyond the whole. He’ll quote Abelard ‘nominalism for the knowledge of terms, realism for the knowledge of relation’ and Simondon explictely universalizes that aphorism in this book.
Simondon upends Hegel’s dialectic by not utilizing the law of the excluded middle. I noticed I had just recently read Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory and I said that Bergson provided content to Kant’s “thoughts without content are empty,” through making time a lived time through duration. In this book Gilbert Simondon explicitly refutes Bergson’s duration as insufficent and gives the concept to Kant’s “intuitions without concepts are blind” by giving the form a transductive (his word) existence.
Obviously, Dasein is Simondon’s focal point and our ability to think, interact with others, evolutionary development, moral development, God relationship, and Gestalt psychology as the telos for our entelechy (his word, realization of potential) and they motivate his presented theory. I discovered this book through a highly favorable footnote in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense and Deleuze treads some of the same territory that is presented in this book in that book and also in his book Difference and Repetition .
Cybernetics plays a role in this book. The concept of feedback and recursion ordering the now through its output generating its input is not alien to Simondon’s themes especially when he speaks about information theory, I should have also included information theory in my first sentence in this review. That just illustrates how deep this book is.
You know that old snappy aphorism “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” of course, it’s not true, while Simondon negates the ontogenesis itself and will say the individual is not known through its species and the species doesn’t define the individual.
As with Deleuze when Simondon speaks about his Gestalt or Jungian psychoanalysis, I just ignore it as mostly mumbo-jumbo. The certainty of sexual identity he proposes is out of step with today’s thinking, for example. The development of a mass of divergent feelings often at odds giving rise to who we are as a Gestalt (shape, form) are relevant for today.
The discussion of the dual perspective of energy as either a particle or a wave is just as relevant today. Perception giving reality through hyletics (his word, abstraction from the form) is part of Simondon’s system.
There is a lot to this book. The science is advanced and even though he wrote it in 1958 it doesn’t seem to be out of date in that department. The philosophical principles are complex and make the book a fun book to read.
August 21, 2024
(I haven't really understood this book in it's entirety, I feel like that's going to take me at least a decade, also, I started skimming and skipping a little bit from page 292 up until the start of the conclusion, hence my want-to-read status)
Well, I just came out of this book feeling it to be one of the most intense reading experiences I have ever had, and simultaneously the most refreshing. It probably just changed my outlook on life - because Simondon was at the juncture of so many movements, and he synthesizes them all - he understands the demand of science, just as much as he has an incredible sensitivity to, called today, mental illness such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, etc. Yet, he also goes against the cold prescriptive positivism of some doctors in his theory of psychical individuation (and also cold positivism in other science, biology and physics.) Also he tries to get around the cynical theory of linguistics and it's relation to lack put forth in psychoanalysis and structuralism. Sure, Lacan was one step ahead, but also one step backward in that his obsessive focus on the language that forms in response to a intense and overwhelming 'Other' threatens to go back to a cold solipsism, even in it's attack on the supposed pure reason of modern sciences and Western behavioral psychiatry. Simondon would rather replace linguistics with 'signals', essentially plastic forms of communication that can be human or animal, and the Other with the collective. The collective is the structuring but also that which allows for freedom and experimentation, a modification of the grounds of sense that support a being.
Put in everyday terms, no person can go through it all alone. However, nobody is trapped in anything, and the collective is not about what's normal and the individual is not simply a deviation compared to this 'gold standard', it's more complex than that.
He seems also to me he understands the intense wish for freedom and meaning signified by contemporary anguish, all merged with subjects one would find more 'impersonal', like crystallography, quantum physics, the formation of collective organisms like coral, and De Broglie's "Pilot Wave Theory". After reading this book, we wondered why we thought people like Einstein were saying something different and depoliticized, when everything was culminating towards the same joy (science SHOULD BE freeing and collaborate on political lines, maybe not Simondon's view exactly, but definitely mine).
Yeah, Simondon does seem to not mention any of the historical currents of the 20th century by name: I have no idea of his personal involvements, but I don't exactly see him as my foremost thinker on these things. Besides, his ethics is content to leave that to others (but the idea or perspective of science as 'pure logic' considered, Simondon is doing a great deal of good to open it up to the joyful floodgates of our lives where we aren't simply perfectly able-bodied, and science should not become pop ideologies of the perfect beings that are. Information, not form.)
My favorite part was the third major section on Psychic Individuation because of Simondon's perspective of the dynamism and moving sensations that the mind goes through, in many ways we are made up just as much as the microsensations and affects we feel day-to-day, the heat on our skin, or our allergies, the pleasure of the sun setting, than most people realize. These poignant final sections say that the kind of psychology meered too much in absolutes, even Gestalt, can't account for the emotional sublimity and agony we feel sometimes in our day to day lives. We are at the juncture of so many currents that no absolutes can tell us how to live with the pure uniqueness of our situations, our times and places. The climate, the food, our sensations our 'tropisms', our spirituality. How can any of it be reduced to just one thing? We have to realize the absolute potential for us to turn-the-tides, living can't just be getting-by, surviving.
The most emotionally affecting part of the book was pg. 282, on anxiety. Even anxiety is embedded in the world, anxiety is the crying and the terror, that which scrambles to grow but can't find meaning in the here and now. It can't find meaning in it's tendencies, it's "tropisms". It must interact with a collectivity, which can be anything you want, so long as it is positive desire (and this may be my D&G kicking in).
"...instead of having the ability to find the solution to the problem of perceptions and the problem of affectivity, feels all the problems flowing back into it. (pg 282.)"
Rather, life is the meeting ground of everything: In the conclusion, Simondon really has no more holds barred, and he throws everything in the kitchen sink in the kind of complex, mystical, and awesome view of individuals as metastable, transductive and transindividual. What this means is that life is pure ethics (and not morals, his Spinoza influence), pure actualization, a pure turning point. The human being is just one of many becomings and sensations - but his developement also draws on the entire collective, "here comes everybody!" (Joyce), and Simondon means everybody: parasites, microorganisms, collective organisms (coral). He is a surprising, but also not so surprising admirer of Jung, in his idea of the collective unconscious which is essentially transmutable from time-to-time, alchemy IS this relation where actualization is possible. Creative solutions to problems, and sympathy/sensitivity/deep empathy for others is what will get us out of this substantialist mess where nothing can change. By others side (psst that other can be anything, because you are seen by the world, no matter what you do) - we are invincible (and this may just be my sentimentalism interpreting Simondon's ideas).
There is a definite strand of Leibniz (the monad or world in a grain of sand), Nietzsche (overcoming trauma and illness through sympathy and reverence for life and Zarathustra's arriving on the other side), but ESPECIALLY Spinoza, and his conception of Ethics as tending towards perfection via looking past categories (the domain of morality). I probably got all of those philosophers viewpoints wrong but, uh, let's just move on.
Talking of his conception of the two paths of Ethics, Simondon says:
"This duality stems from the fact that substance is separate from becoming, and because being, which is defined as one and completely given in individuated substance, is finished: thus, on the level of the essences and outside becoming, there arises a pure ethics that can only manage to preserve the theoretical substantiality of the individuated being and that in fact surrounds the latter with an illusion of substantiality. This first path of ethics, which could be called substantializing ethics (or the ethics of the sage or contemplative ethics), is only valid for a state of exception, which would not itself be stable without its opposition to the state of passion, servitude,
vice, and existence in the here and now; its substantiality is merely a counterexistence, an anti becoming, and life must become around it so that it can acquire the impression of substantiality by contrast; contemplative virtue requires merchants and madmen, just as the sober man requires the drunk man in order to be aware of being sober, and the adult needs the child to know what it is to be adult. It is only through an effect of perceptive and affective
relativity that this ethics can seem like an ethics of wisdom seeking the immutability of being."
(pg 373-374)
So let's free these small perceptions - we are all metastable, that is, our life is site of an absolute turning point.
This Simondon's final conception of Ethics:
"This wild or crazed act remains with only an internal normativity; it consists in itself and sustains itself in the vertigo of its iterative existence. It absorbs and concentrates within itself all emotion and all action, makes the different representations of the subject converge toward it, and becomes a unique point of view... Ethics is that through which the subject remains subject, refusing to become an absolute individual, a closed domain of reality, or a detached singularity; it is that through which the subject remains in an ever-charged internal and external problematic, i.e. in a real present, living on the central zone
of being, not wanting to become either form or matter. Ethics expresses the meaning of perpetuated individuation, the stability of becoming, which is that of the being as pre-individuated, individuating, and tending toward the continuous that reconstructs in an organized form of communication a reality as vast as the pre-individual system. Across the individual—understood as
the amplificative transfer emerging from Nature—societies become a World.
(pg. 380)
Well, I just came out of this book feeling it to be one of the most intense reading experiences I have ever had, and simultaneously the most refreshing. It probably just changed my outlook on life - because Simondon was at the juncture of so many movements, and he synthesizes them all - he understands the demand of science, just as much as he has an incredible sensitivity to, called today, mental illness such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, etc. Yet, he also goes against the cold prescriptive positivism of some doctors in his theory of psychical individuation (and also cold positivism in other science, biology and physics.) Also he tries to get around the cynical theory of linguistics and it's relation to lack put forth in psychoanalysis and structuralism. Sure, Lacan was one step ahead, but also one step backward in that his obsessive focus on the language that forms in response to a intense and overwhelming 'Other' threatens to go back to a cold solipsism, even in it's attack on the supposed pure reason of modern sciences and Western behavioral psychiatry. Simondon would rather replace linguistics with 'signals', essentially plastic forms of communication that can be human or animal, and the Other with the collective. The collective is the structuring but also that which allows for freedom and experimentation, a modification of the grounds of sense that support a being.
Put in everyday terms, no person can go through it all alone. However, nobody is trapped in anything, and the collective is not about what's normal and the individual is not simply a deviation compared to this 'gold standard', it's more complex than that.
He seems also to me he understands the intense wish for freedom and meaning signified by contemporary anguish, all merged with subjects one would find more 'impersonal', like crystallography, quantum physics, the formation of collective organisms like coral, and De Broglie's "Pilot Wave Theory". After reading this book, we wondered why we thought people like Einstein were saying something different and depoliticized, when everything was culminating towards the same joy (science SHOULD BE freeing and collaborate on political lines, maybe not Simondon's view exactly, but definitely mine).
Yeah, Simondon does seem to not mention any of the historical currents of the 20th century by name: I have no idea of his personal involvements, but I don't exactly see him as my foremost thinker on these things. Besides, his ethics is content to leave that to others (but the idea or perspective of science as 'pure logic' considered, Simondon is doing a great deal of good to open it up to the joyful floodgates of our lives where we aren't simply perfectly able-bodied, and science should not become pop ideologies of the perfect beings that are. Information, not form.)
My favorite part was the third major section on Psychic Individuation because of Simondon's perspective of the dynamism and moving sensations that the mind goes through, in many ways we are made up just as much as the microsensations and affects we feel day-to-day, the heat on our skin, or our allergies, the pleasure of the sun setting, than most people realize. These poignant final sections say that the kind of psychology meered too much in absolutes, even Gestalt, can't account for the emotional sublimity and agony we feel sometimes in our day to day lives. We are at the juncture of so many currents that no absolutes can tell us how to live with the pure uniqueness of our situations, our times and places. The climate, the food, our sensations our 'tropisms', our spirituality. How can any of it be reduced to just one thing? We have to realize the absolute potential for us to turn-the-tides, living can't just be getting-by, surviving.
The most emotionally affecting part of the book was pg. 282, on anxiety. Even anxiety is embedded in the world, anxiety is the crying and the terror, that which scrambles to grow but can't find meaning in the here and now. It can't find meaning in it's tendencies, it's "tropisms". It must interact with a collectivity, which can be anything you want, so long as it is positive desire (and this may be my D&G kicking in).
"...instead of having the ability to find the solution to the problem of perceptions and the problem of affectivity, feels all the problems flowing back into it. (pg 282.)"
Rather, life is the meeting ground of everything: In the conclusion, Simondon really has no more holds barred, and he throws everything in the kitchen sink in the kind of complex, mystical, and awesome view of individuals as metastable, transductive and transindividual. What this means is that life is pure ethics (and not morals, his Spinoza influence), pure actualization, a pure turning point. The human being is just one of many becomings and sensations - but his developement also draws on the entire collective, "here comes everybody!" (Joyce), and Simondon means everybody: parasites, microorganisms, collective organisms (coral). He is a surprising, but also not so surprising admirer of Jung, in his idea of the collective unconscious which is essentially transmutable from time-to-time, alchemy IS this relation where actualization is possible. Creative solutions to problems, and sympathy/sensitivity/deep empathy for others is what will get us out of this substantialist mess where nothing can change. By others side (psst that other can be anything, because you are seen by the world, no matter what you do) - we are invincible (and this may just be my sentimentalism interpreting Simondon's ideas).
There is a definite strand of Leibniz (the monad or world in a grain of sand), Nietzsche (overcoming trauma and illness through sympathy and reverence for life and Zarathustra's arriving on the other side), but ESPECIALLY Spinoza, and his conception of Ethics as tending towards perfection via looking past categories (the domain of morality). I probably got all of those philosophers viewpoints wrong but, uh, let's just move on.
Talking of his conception of the two paths of Ethics, Simondon says:
"This duality stems from the fact that substance is separate from becoming, and because being, which is defined as one and completely given in individuated substance, is finished: thus, on the level of the essences and outside becoming, there arises a pure ethics that can only manage to preserve the theoretical substantiality of the individuated being and that in fact surrounds the latter with an illusion of substantiality. This first path of ethics, which could be called substantializing ethics (or the ethics of the sage or contemplative ethics), is only valid for a state of exception, which would not itself be stable without its opposition to the state of passion, servitude,
vice, and existence in the here and now; its substantiality is merely a counterexistence, an anti becoming, and life must become around it so that it can acquire the impression of substantiality by contrast; contemplative virtue requires merchants and madmen, just as the sober man requires the drunk man in order to be aware of being sober, and the adult needs the child to know what it is to be adult. It is only through an effect of perceptive and affective
relativity that this ethics can seem like an ethics of wisdom seeking the immutability of being."
(pg 373-374)
So let's free these small perceptions - we are all metastable, that is, our life is site of an absolute turning point.
This Simondon's final conception of Ethics:
"This wild or crazed act remains with only an internal normativity; it consists in itself and sustains itself in the vertigo of its iterative existence. It absorbs and concentrates within itself all emotion and all action, makes the different representations of the subject converge toward it, and becomes a unique point of view... Ethics is that through which the subject remains subject, refusing to become an absolute individual, a closed domain of reality, or a detached singularity; it is that through which the subject remains in an ever-charged internal and external problematic, i.e. in a real present, living on the central zone
of being, not wanting to become either form or matter. Ethics expresses the meaning of perpetuated individuation, the stability of becoming, which is that of the being as pre-individuated, individuating, and tending toward the continuous that reconstructs in an organized form of communication a reality as vast as the pre-individual system. Across the individual—understood as
the amplificative transfer emerging from Nature—societies become a World.
(pg. 380)
February 1, 2016
La contraportada advierte: “Quien esté en la búsqueda de un sistema filosófico completo, sofisticado y ambicioso, aquí se halla una de las catedrales del siglo XX”. Mucho, Lucho, como decimos en Chile (es decir, excesivo).
Primero, la forma. El libro es largo y tedioso, con muchas pasadas y repasadas sobre dos o tres conceptos caros al autor, pero que sin duda para un lector corriente y más o menos instruido solo parece una pequeña tortura. Es como para decir cada diez páginas “si ya entendí, me quedó claro el concepto, por favor no vuelva al tema”. Simondon se consume sus buenas 100 páginas en digresiones de cristalografía, mecánica cuántica y hasta producción artesanal de ladrillos con el aparente objetivo de dar fundamento a su teoría. No logré encontrar nada de eso. Cien páginas de más. Dado que su obra principal tiene 438 páginas, 100 páginas menos se habrían agradecido. Cuando se llega al final del libro (largo viaje, requiere una voluntad férrea), uno descubre algo verdaderamente notable: toda su teoría en realidad cabe en las escasas 30 páginas del suplemento que aparece al final (“Forma, información y potenciales”), conferencia de 1960. Mi recomendación: vayan a la página 481 y lean de ahí en adelante. Es suficiente.
Pero está el tema de fondo, el “sistema filosófico completo, sofisticado y ambicioso”, la “catedral del siglo XX” que asegura algún exégeta. Simondon no parece llegar a esas alturas. Su teoría es sencillísima, solo que emplea palabras novedosas y parece incorporar la moda de la época, la información. Sostiene que el ser es antes del individuo (es una “naturaleza preindividual”), que hay un ser que luego deviene y que el devenir sería parte del ser (el ser tendría fases), un ser “rico en potenciales”. Para que esos potenciales se actualicen se requiere que el ser se encuentre en un estado de “metaestabilidad” (que no define, de modo que queda a criterio del lector saber qué es metaestabilidad, pero parece algo bonito y muy dinámico), y en ese estado de metaestabilidad el ser estaría dispuesto a recibir la forma (bajo forma de información, aunque Simondon no aclara información de qué). Su ejemplo base, el cristal, requiere de un “germen”, sin el cual no puede “individuarse”. Una materia metaestable asociada a un germen que la estructura. Germen que obtiene su forma de algún sitio inhóspito y desconocido (¿de las ideas platónicas?). El método por el que el cristal se forma a partir del germen es la “transducción”, que es “una operación física, biológica, mental, social, por la cual una actividad se propaga progresivamente en el interior de un dominio” (p.21). Muy ordenado. ¿Incluye a los remolinos, Simondon? ¿Cuál sería el germen a partir del cual se organiza un remolino de agua hirviendo? ¿Incluye Simondon las bandadas de estorninos? ¿Cómo serían “transductivas” las bandadas de estorninos?¿Cuál sería el núcleo (el germen) a partir del cual se estructura una bandada? ¿Y los hormigueros? ¿La coordinación de fases de destellos luminosos en las luciérnagas macho es “transductiva”?
Un problema adicional que surge de la teoría de Simondon es que niega toda creatividad. No existe lo novedoso. Todo está ya contenido en potencia: “Si un ser (viviente) parece poseer un alto nivel de organización, es en realidad debido a que integra elementos ya informados e integrados y que su propia tarea integradora es bastante limitada” (p.193) Limitada. ¿Qué tal? ¡¡Limitada!!
En suma, mucho ruido y pocas, bien pocas, nueces. Y rancias, encima.
Sorry.
Primero, la forma. El libro es largo y tedioso, con muchas pasadas y repasadas sobre dos o tres conceptos caros al autor, pero que sin duda para un lector corriente y más o menos instruido solo parece una pequeña tortura. Es como para decir cada diez páginas “si ya entendí, me quedó claro el concepto, por favor no vuelva al tema”. Simondon se consume sus buenas 100 páginas en digresiones de cristalografía, mecánica cuántica y hasta producción artesanal de ladrillos con el aparente objetivo de dar fundamento a su teoría. No logré encontrar nada de eso. Cien páginas de más. Dado que su obra principal tiene 438 páginas, 100 páginas menos se habrían agradecido. Cuando se llega al final del libro (largo viaje, requiere una voluntad férrea), uno descubre algo verdaderamente notable: toda su teoría en realidad cabe en las escasas 30 páginas del suplemento que aparece al final (“Forma, información y potenciales”), conferencia de 1960. Mi recomendación: vayan a la página 481 y lean de ahí en adelante. Es suficiente.
Pero está el tema de fondo, el “sistema filosófico completo, sofisticado y ambicioso”, la “catedral del siglo XX” que asegura algún exégeta. Simondon no parece llegar a esas alturas. Su teoría es sencillísima, solo que emplea palabras novedosas y parece incorporar la moda de la época, la información. Sostiene que el ser es antes del individuo (es una “naturaleza preindividual”), que hay un ser que luego deviene y que el devenir sería parte del ser (el ser tendría fases), un ser “rico en potenciales”. Para que esos potenciales se actualicen se requiere que el ser se encuentre en un estado de “metaestabilidad” (que no define, de modo que queda a criterio del lector saber qué es metaestabilidad, pero parece algo bonito y muy dinámico), y en ese estado de metaestabilidad el ser estaría dispuesto a recibir la forma (bajo forma de información, aunque Simondon no aclara información de qué). Su ejemplo base, el cristal, requiere de un “germen”, sin el cual no puede “individuarse”. Una materia metaestable asociada a un germen que la estructura. Germen que obtiene su forma de algún sitio inhóspito y desconocido (¿de las ideas platónicas?). El método por el que el cristal se forma a partir del germen es la “transducción”, que es “una operación física, biológica, mental, social, por la cual una actividad se propaga progresivamente en el interior de un dominio” (p.21). Muy ordenado. ¿Incluye a los remolinos, Simondon? ¿Cuál sería el germen a partir del cual se organiza un remolino de agua hirviendo? ¿Incluye Simondon las bandadas de estorninos? ¿Cómo serían “transductivas” las bandadas de estorninos?¿Cuál sería el núcleo (el germen) a partir del cual se estructura una bandada? ¿Y los hormigueros? ¿La coordinación de fases de destellos luminosos en las luciérnagas macho es “transductiva”?
Un problema adicional que surge de la teoría de Simondon es que niega toda creatividad. No existe lo novedoso. Todo está ya contenido en potencia: “Si un ser (viviente) parece poseer un alto nivel de organización, es en realidad debido a que integra elementos ya informados e integrados y que su propia tarea integradora es bastante limitada” (p.193) Limitada. ¿Qué tal? ¡¡Limitada!!
En suma, mucho ruido y pocas, bien pocas, nueces. Y rancias, encima.
Sorry.
July 23, 2024
"Across the individual—understood as the amplificative transfer emerging from Nature—societies become a World."
Simondon's groundbreaking work which single-handedly shattered all the presumptions and certain grounds I had about life, beings and our World. — It is a work that should be taught at every school, as soon as possible, for every person should have access to the truth; — and no work of philosophy has ever got so near to representing and embodying truth — we start to doubt truth itself in the light of this work; this book has supplanted it.
Simondon's groundbreaking work which single-handedly shattered all the presumptions and certain grounds I had about life, beings and our World. — It is a work that should be taught at every school, as soon as possible, for every person should have access to the truth; — and no work of philosophy has ever got so near to representing and embodying truth — we start to doubt truth itself in the light of this work; this book has supplanted it.
January 31, 2022
This book is complicated. It is good. Simondon expects the reader to meet him where he is, and little is done to meet the reader where they are. As such, I will not give this five stars. Irrespective of that, this is a book that is worth reading for people who have familiarity with physics and ancient philosophy. Simondon offers an alternative explanation of individuation in these fields. He contends that hylomorphic (relationship between matter and form) schemas "obscure," individuation.
I am not 100% sure I understood everything in this book, and it will behoove me to reread it after I have read more Simondon and philosophy generally.
I found his section about anxiety near the end of the book to be particularly soothing.
I am not 100% sure I understood everything in this book, and it will behoove me to reread it after I have read more Simondon and philosophy generally.
I found his section about anxiety near the end of the book to be particularly soothing.
August 21, 2023
La de Simondon es una teoría general, pero también una teoría sobre la imposibilidad de lo general. El libro comienza por la física y llega a la sociología y la psicología de un modo que tal vez no se ha intentado desde Comte, y sin embargo la crítica del positivismo es feroz, como lo es de las ontologías de Hegel, Marx y Freud. La filosofía transductiva de Simondon es un pensamiento extremadamente complejo, pero su influencia sobre la cibernética contemporánea, y sobre autores como Foucault y Latour es innegable. Una excelente edición de Cactus.
July 16, 2025
This is one of the greatest works of philosophy I've ever read. I will need to read it again to begin to fully understand it all. Took me forever to read it this first time through, so I will be taking a break. I had to look up a new word almost every page. There are many different paradigmatic interpretations of the Plato vs Aristotle paradigm. I think this is one of the best because it gets into the different between individualism vs collectivism. It's something you rarely see in the West. Even when you consider Deleuze, who must have been elaborating the idea of molar and molecular from Gilbert Simondon. It's easy to get caught up in our definitions of spatial identity within time and forget that it's just one way to operationalize the variables.
I found Gilbert's work with molecular crystals to be interesting, considering both thermodynamics and the metaphor for identity. I like the idea at least as much as Deleuze on the embryo kind of universe. Should we be able to accept Simondon's book as a new pragmatic paradigm and not simply philosophy, we would be able to accept his science. Since that's what it is, more than philosophy. He has done experiments, that when categorized a certain way add up to a conclusion. The philosophy is necessarily additive to politically implicate the science.
I found Gilbert's work with molecular crystals to be interesting, considering both thermodynamics and the metaphor for identity. I like the idea at least as much as Deleuze on the embryo kind of universe. Should we be able to accept Simondon's book as a new pragmatic paradigm and not simply philosophy, we would be able to accept his science. Since that's what it is, more than philosophy. He has done experiments, that when categorized a certain way add up to a conclusion. The philosophy is necessarily additive to politically implicate the science.
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