From substance to relation

Translated from the French original. Quotations are translated from the French editions cited, and page numbers refer to those editions. The Whitehead quotation is given in his original English.

Introduction

This essay is about Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information)¹, written in 1958 by Gilbert Simondon and published by Krisis in 2005. Simondon was a twentieth-century French philosopher chiefly interested in epistemology, psychology and the philosophy of technology. The book is a new edition bringing together The Individual and Its Physico-Biological Genesis (L’Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique), published by PUF in 1964, and Psychic and Collective Individuation (L’Individuation psychique et collective), published by Aubier in 1989. This edition makes up the whole of his doctoral thesis. We leave out of our analysis the supplements that the new edition adds, such as “Complementary note on the consequences of the notion of individuation” and “History of the notion of the individual.” Rather than follow the plan of ILFI, we set out the main concepts Simondon introduces, bearing in mind that analysis cannot isolate them: they are closely linked and form a system. We illustrate this path with examples drawn from technics, bringing the main thesis into dialogue with the secondary thesis, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (Du mode d’existence des objets techniques)², published by Aubier in 2006.

After setting out Simondon’s thinking on individuation and how it criticizes the notion of substance, we show the intuitions that Simondon and Bachelard share, and conclude with a critique of the notion of the preindividual.

Thinking individuation

Simondon’s philosophy rests on a critical study of ancient modes of thought (that of the Ionian natural philosophers, Aristotle’s hylomorphism, the substantialist atomism of Democritus), which he reworks in light of the latest scientific discoveries of his time³. In an approach similar to Merleau-Ponty’s⁴, he criticizes the notions of form, matter and substance, which philosophy treats as structures of the World posited as realities in themselves. His thought centers on the individual and its genesis. The main and innovative idea he develops is to think the individual in formation as an incomplete individual, one that retains, in its dimension of being, a preindividuality acting on the formation of the individual. In this essay we examine the criticisms Simondon levels against the idea of substance through the notion of individuation.

The critique of the principle of individuation

Simondon calls into question classical concepts and modes of thought, such as the principle of individuation. The unexamined presupposition of substantialist philosophy is that individuation has a principle, prior to the individual, that is supposed to explain its formation.

For Democritus, for example, the atom is an absolute principle, existing in itself and able to explain the totality of individuals. This conception survives into modern atomistic materialism, which regards quantum particles as primary substances at the origin of individuated nature. The problem is that the individual becomes at once a principle and an object of inquiry. The individuated atom therefore cannot be conceived as a principle of individuation.

The same criticism applies to Aristotle’s hylomorphic schema, which considers the individual as the union of form and matter. Matter and form are already individuated realities, and so they cannot account for the formation of the individual. The operation of taking-form must be questioned, and the emphasis placed on the mediation between these so-called principles: that mediation is the true obscure zone of hylomorphism. Certain notions inherited from substantialism, such as form, matter and stable equilibrium, should therefore be replaced by new and fundamental notions, such as information, energy and metastability⁵.

Simondon reverses the classical approach: it becomes important to “know the individual through individuation rather than individuation starting from the individual.”⁶ The operation of individuation is contemporaneous with the individual, not prior to it. The principle of individuation does not exist before the individual. Understanding the individual means grasping its genesis, and therefore studying preindividual reality.

We can now see why, in MEOT, Simondon holds that studying the technical object requires tracing its genesis: “However, instead of starting from the individuality of the technical object, or even from its specificity, which is very unstable, in order to try to define the laws of its genesis within the framework of this individuality or this specificity, it is preferable to reverse the problem: the criteria of genesis are what allow us to define the individuality and the specificity of the technical object.”⁷ This method also becomes central to the study of technicity: “This is why, to understand technicity, it is not enough to start from constituted technical objects. Objects appear at a certain moment, but technicity precedes and exceeds them. Technical objects result from an objectivation of technicity. They are produced by it, but technicity is not exhausted by objects and is not entirely contained in them.”⁸

If the individual is constituted by its preindividual reality, can we still think of being and the individual as identical? This conception of the individual leads us toward a new study of being.

Being and becoming

With Simondon, we move from an ontology, the study of constituted being, to an ontogenesis, the study of the genesis of being. The opposition between being and becoming is a mistaken conception that stems from substantialist ideas. Being is becoming and becoming is being: “The only principle by which we can be guided is that of the conservation of being through becoming. This conservation exists through exchanges between structure and operation, proceeding by quantum leaps through successive equilibria.”⁹

The individual is not the whole of being, only a part of it. It is now more apt to consider being as the pair formed by the individual and its milieu, corresponding respectively to two phases of being that appear after the first individuation. The milieu is being minus the individual, so being is richer than the individual. The individual and the milieu are in a transductive relation, since the individual conditions the milieu just as the milieu conditions the individual.

In MEOT, the technical object is a relation between its geographical milieu and its technical milieu, and thereby creates a third milieu, the techno-geographical milieu: “it creates its associated milieu by itself and is truly individualized in it.”¹⁰ A technical object becomes a technical individual when it needs its associated milieu in order to function, which a technical ensemble does not. The human individual can be considered the associated milieu of the technical individual, since the human individual contributes to integrating technical individuals into a technical ensemble. It is an organizer, and a relation between different technical realities¹¹. A technical object without an associated milieu can be considered a technical element if it enters into the constitution of a technical individual. Simondon compares the technical element to an organ in a living being.

In his dialectic, Hegel conceived the negative as the second moment of his system. Simondon instead conceives the incompatible, supersaturated system as one in which the negative is immanent. It is individuation that turns the negative into the positive. There is no longer a succession of dialectical moments, but phases of being that coexist in parallel. Alfred North Whitehead sums up this intuition well when he says that “there is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming.”¹² Being is not in becoming, nor even the result of becoming: being is becoming. Becoming is a perpetual resolution, amplifying and metastable, that proceeds through crises. The dialectic can only be thought for monophasic being, substantial being. If we substantialize being, we exclude it from all becoming, since such a being is then resolved in advance and deprived of potentials.

This new conception of being invites us to reject the value of being attributed to substance. The concept of relation takes its place.

The realism of relation

Simondon’s philosophy can be called a realism of relation. The transductive relation is a relation that constitutes terms which did not preexist it. The value of being no longer lies in fixed, stable terms existing in themselves, but in the relation between nonsubstantial, metastable terms. Relation is thus a “modality of being.”¹³ A term cannot be conceived without its relational aspect. The problem with the philosophy of the subject is that it considers the subject as an isolated term whose relations would be accidental: it substantializes the subject. Yet the subject cannot be considered a pure term, since it cannot constitute itself by itself: “Substance is like the relational term become absolute.”¹⁴ Substance must be considered as an extreme case, in which relation is devalued to the utmost. The subject is not a term isolated from relation: the subject truly is relation.

The opposition between culture and technics arises mainly because culture substantializes the machine and so misunderstands it. Like the subject, the machine is regarded as an absolute, isolated unity. Yet understanding the relational aspect of the machine is essential to reuniting culture and technics. The machine is in relation with its technical elements and with other machines within a technical ensemble. It is not closed in on itself but open to possible new relations. The notion of the machine must be reevaluated within culture¹⁵.

Simondon invites us to think being in relation through transduction. Transduction is “that by which a structure appears in a problematic domain as providing the resolution of the problems posed.”¹⁶ Simondonian being is above all a problematic being. It is a transductive unity, capable of falling out of phase with itself, of decentering itself. Starting from incompatible and disparate dimensions¹⁷, being, through individuation, resolves its own problematic by integrating its dimensions into a new, higher one. Individuation is only a partial resolution, since it never exhausts the totality of a system’s potentials. Transduction brings the system’s different orders of magnitude into communication. It expresses individuation, and this notion lets Simondon carry his inquiry from physical individuation to vital individuation, and from psychic individuation to psycho-social individuation. Individuation is not, however, a linear process, as the next section shows.

Metastability

Individuation cannot be thought without the notion of metastability. The notion is borrowed from the study of physico-chemical systems, and emphasizes the potential energy residing in a system. Under certain conditions of tension, a system can pass from one state to another by releasing part of its potential energy. A new and sudden structuration then takes place, in which the system tips into a new metastable equilibrium. The quantum leap offers a close analogy: an electron can pass from one energy state to another almost instantaneously, thereby transforming its individuality¹⁸.

In tracing the history of the notion of the individual¹⁹, Simondon finds that the individual has always been considered to be in stable equilibrium, yet this equilibrium excludes all becoming. An individual in stable equilibrium is a dead individual, deprived of potentials and therefore of any possibility of transformation: “Only death would be the resolution of all tensions, and death is the solution to no problem. The resolving individuation is the one that conserves tensions in the equilibrium of metastability, instead of annihilating them in the equilibrium of stability.”²⁰ The living being, unlike the physical individual, is in perpetual individuation. Its preindividual nature is rich in potentials, the source of future individuations and of new metastable states. It is “agent and theater of individuation.”²¹ Metastability is therefore a condition of life.

In MEOT, through the concept of metastability, Simondon offers a discontinuist view of technical evolution: “The specific evolution of technical objects does not take place in an absolutely continuous way, nor in a completely discontinuous way. It includes plateaus, defined by the fact that they achieve successive systems of coherence. Between the plateaus that mark a structural reorganization, an evolution of a continuous type may exist.”²² Technical progress is made up of major, discontinuous improvements: sudden structural reorganizations that amount to discoveries of functional synergies. Minor, continuous improvements do not drive the evolution of the technical object, since they depend only on uses and are mainly governed by the laws of the market and by aesthetics, out of a concern to present a technical object as superior to older ones²³.

Internal resonance and information

When a reality is undergoing individuation, there is “a dependence of each subset on the whole, and there is also a dependence of the whole on the subsets.”²⁴ There is thus communication between two different orders of magnitude. This internal resonance is contemporaneous with individuation. Simondon criticizes the hylomorphic schema through this notion, and by introducing the energetic condition. Matter that is being molded is in internal resonance, since the becoming of each molecule acts on the becoming of all the others, so that no molecule can be isolated. This resonance institutes a communication between microphysical matter and macrophysical energy. The mold plays the role of a limit in the process of matter’s taking-form²⁵. The notion of internal resonance is closely linked to that of reciprocal or circular causality²⁶: the relation of cause and effect becomes opaque in a complex system.

The technical object becomes concrete²⁷ when each element it contains enters into resonance: “The technical being evolves by convergence and by adaptation to itself. It is unified internally according to a principle of internal resonance.”²⁸

Internal resonance leads us to consider the information of a system. Simondon takes the concept of information from cybernetics, and more particularly from one of its founders, Norbert Wiener, who characterizes information as a measure of organization. Information is considered negative entropy, a struggle against the disorganization of a system. Information brings variability to a system, and lies between pure chance and mere regularity: “Information is, in a sense, what brings a series of unpredictable, new states, belonging to no sequence definable in advance.”²⁹ Information comes into play when the system falls into incompatibility, when two disparate realities are present in tension. It is “the signification that will emerge when an operation of individuation discovers the dimensions according to which two disparate realities can become a system.”³⁰ Where there is disparation, there is signification. Information is not a term, but “that by which the incompatibility of the unresolved system becomes an organizing dimension in the resolution.”³¹ Information is a condition for turning potential energy into actual energy.

The technical object becomes concrete if there are obstacles to its internal functioning. The information that results from the system’s incompatibilities is a condition of individuation. A machine with a zero margin of indeterminacy is unimaginable: it would have no variability, and its functioning would have no signification. The perfect automaton does not exist.

With this new conception of information, Simondon criticizes the conception of form, a critique he carries out in his study of psychic individuation.

Gestalt psychology in psychic individuation

Simondon renews Gestalt psychology (psychologie de la Forme, or Gestaltpsychologie) through the concept of metastability. Gestalt psychology is a theory that conceives perception as the grasping of global forms, whether structured or not. It is therefore close to systems thinking, in that psychic activity must be considered as a complex system in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It therefore makes no sense to study the good form as an addition or juxtaposition of simple elements. The good form of Gestaltpsychologie is a complex process that tends toward harmony, toward a stable state. Simondon notes, however, that the good form is not the stable form but the metastable form, which carries signification and is therefore closely linked to the notion of information: “Signification is the sense that an event takes on in relation to forms that already exist. Signification is what gives an event the value of information.”³²

Psychic individuation cannot be separated from social individuation, since each of these domains needs the other. The individual does not resolve its problematic through psychic individuation alone. Without the collective, the individual cannot overcome anguish. The subject is in anguish when being and its associated nature come apart: it then carries the whole of its existence on its shoulders, submerged by preindividual reality. Nor can it integrate affectivity and perception, since it has no recourse to the collective. “Anguish is an emotion without action, a feeling without perception.”³³ The collective thus enters the problematic of the psychic, which is why Simondon introduces a new notion: the transindividual.

Simondon thus resolves the problem of solipsism through the concept of participation. The individual is linked to others through its transindividual reality. “Participation, for the individual, is being an element in a larger individuation through the charge of preindividual reality that the individual contains, that is, the potentials it harbors.”³⁴ Individuals are linked through their preindividual reality and individuate into a collective unity.

In binocular vision, we integrate the information from the left and right eyes into a new dimension, that of depth perception. The same principle holds in psycho-social individuation, where affectivity and perception are disparate elements that are integrated into a new dimension: emotion.

We will return to psycho-social individuation in the conclusion, to set out its problematic relation with preindividual reality. Before that, the epistemological analyses of Gaston Bachelard will help clarify preindividual reality.

Gaston Bachelard and The New Scientific Spirit

Through his interest in psychology, Simondon drew close to Gaston Bachelard and undertook, under his supervision, a thesis on polarity in psychology³⁵. Although Bachelard’s writings on psychoanalysis and the imagination inspired him, he drew above all on Bachelard’s epistemological analyses, and took an interest in “knowing more closely not only the results of scientific work, but the research methods themselves.”³⁶ We will draw a comparison between Simondon and Bachelard, based mainly on the latter’s The New Scientific Spirit (Le Nouvel esprit scientifique), which deals with the essential novelty of contemporary scientific thought.

Non-Cartesian epistemology

For Bachelard, scientific thought rests on realism and rationalism, two contradictory metaphysics. The epistemologist must stand between these two metaphysics and establish a dialogue between them. This requires questioning basic notions by concentrating on their relational aspect. What we see called into question in Euclid’s fifth postulate, for example, is the notion of parallelism between straight lines: “Indeed, we can already see that the role of entities takes precedence over their nature, and that essence is contemporaneous with relation. Thus we will understand the problem posed by Euclid’s postulate when we truly consider the role of straight lines in a plane, and no longer their nature as absolute or as being, when we know how, by varying the application, to generalize the function of the notion of a straight line in a plane, when we learn about the extension of notions beyond their basic domain.”³⁷ By analyzing the role of the straight line in a plane, mathematicians built non-Euclidean geometry as a generalization of Euclidean geometry. The parallel line becomes a special line, an already composite notion. Bachelard advocates a mathematical realism in which ideas of transformation allow a notion to be extended: “In this way, we know the mathematical form by its transformations. One could say to the mathematical being: tell me how you are transformed, and I will tell you who you are. […] In short, algebra gathers all relations and nothing but relations. It is as relations that the various geometries are equivalent. It is as relations that they have a reality.”³⁸ Bachelard’s thought, like Simondon’s, thus rests on a realism of relations.

Through these observations he founds a non-Cartesian epistemology, which is a condemnation of the doctrine of simple and absolute natures. Descartes conceives the objective world as composed of absolute elements that can be known in their totality. The simple object is entirely separated from relations with other objects, which for Bachelard is an error: “In reality, there are no simple phenomena. The phenomenon is a fabric of relations. There is no simple nature, no simple substance. Substance is a contexture of attributes.”³⁹ Where Cartesianism went from the simple to the complex, non-Cartesianism performs a reversal, since it goes from the complex to the simple, from the organic to the degenerate. The contemporary science on which non-Cartesian analyses rest “substitutes a kind of operational clarity for clarity in itself. It is not being that illustrates relation: it is relation that illuminates being.”⁴⁰ Non-Cartesian epistemology is a rectification and an extension of the Cartesian system: it does not oppose that system but completes it. It widens the frameworks of knowledge.

The hypothesis of the preindividual

Bachelard’s epistemology is not a “thingist” (chosiste) epistemology. The elementary object of microphysics is not considered a solid: “the electric particle does not have the essential form of the solid, because it deforms in motion.”⁴¹ Relativity invites us to consider the mass of an object as a function of its velocity. An object cannot keep its substantial character once the conservation of matter no longer holds. Energy here plays the role of relation between thing and motion: “Above all, matter must be considered as a transformer of energy, as a source of energy […] it is the notion of energy that forms the most fruitful link between the thing and motion.”⁴²

Quantum theory questions the individuality of the atom, since the absorption of a quantum of energy brings about a differentiation in it. Its form changes if it receives or gives up energy: “Through its energetic development, the atom is becoming as much as being, it is motion as much as thing. It is the element of becoming-being schematized in space-time.”⁴³ Contemporary physics invites us to think the identity of being and becoming, which is, as we have seen, a central notion for Simondon.

The identity of the corpuscle thus no longer holds over time. Wave mechanics shows this too, by conceiving the corpuscle as a wave packet: “The corpuscle cannot have absolute permanence: it cannot hold all its attributes in the way the substance of the philosophers supported all its qualities. The waves that construct it have to satisfy boundary conditions, which are conditions founded in regions far removed from the point where the material corpuscle presents itself as a fleeting shadow. One might as well say that the existence of the corpuscle has a root in all of space. […] Wherever the point acts, it exists.”⁴⁴ Louis de Broglie, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1929 for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons, sums up this idea well: “the material point is no longer conceived as a static entity occupying only a tiny region of space, but as the center of a periodic phenomenon spread all around it.”⁴⁵ Contemporary physics calls into question the physical reality of the material point, reminding us that it is a mathematical abstraction. The individual must be considered in relation to its associated field: here we meet Simondon’s idea of the associated milieu again.

We now better understand certain obscure aspects of Simondon’s notion of the preindividual, in particular this passage from ILFI: “We can suppose that reality is primitively, in itself, like the supersaturated solution and even more completely in the preindividual regime, more than unity and more than identity, capable of manifesting itself as wave or corpuscle.”⁴⁶ The wave and the corpuscle are two individuated realities, two images of a complex phenomenon, which is that of preindividual reality. They are not contradictory but, on the contrary, form a pair⁴⁷. Bachelard’s epistemological analyses present the physical object as having no precise location, through the notion of field, and as not identical to itself, through the new considerations brought by quantum physics and the theory of relativity. The classical logic of individuated being cannot be applied to the genesis of the individual. Studying preindividual reality requires a new logic, in which the principle of the excluded middle and the principle of identity no longer hold.

As Vincent Bontems, a member of the Centre international des études simondoniennes, points out, Simondon draws on the Bachelardian critique of the notion of a simple entity to justify the realism of relation and the hypothesis of the preindividual as more than unity and more than identity⁴⁸. Simondon’s feat is to transpose Bachelard’s analyses to all regimes of individuation, and to the technical object, rather than to physical individuation alone. Although Simondon’s approach is innovative, we have sought to show in this part that he belongs to a line of thought and is not a “philosopher apart.”⁴⁹

Conclusion

We believe that substituting relation for substance raises a fundamental problem, that of the status granted to preindividual reality. As we saw in the chapter on Bachelard, the findings of contemporary science allow us to grasp preindividual reality. But this grasp is possible only in the case of physical individuation. The concept becomes obscure once we consider preindividual reality in the other regimes of individuation. We wonder in particular how transindividual individuation, the individuation of individuals into a collective unity through their preindividual charge, takes place.

First, the distinction between preindividual reality and transindividual reality seems rather blurred if we consider not an order of succession but rather, as Simondon prescribes, the existence of multiple phases in parallel. Moreover, Simondon does not manage to lift the opaque veil that hangs over the encounter between these two realities. He invites us to consider spirituality as a form of the transindividual: “Spirituality is the signification of the relation of the individuated being to the collective, and therefore also of the foundation of this relation, that is, of the fact that the individuated being is not entirely individuated.”⁵⁰ We understand from this quotation that, through spirituality, the individual could become aware of its preindividual reality. Simondon’s explanation nevertheless seems insufficient, and we feel this insufficiency when he writes: “There must be a first encounter between the individual and transindividual reality, and this encounter can only be an exceptional situation that outwardly has the appearance of a revelation.”⁵¹

MEOT offers another way of grasping preindividual reality, though the solution it offers seems to us partial: “The object that comes out of technical invention carries with it something of the being that produced it, and expresses what in this being is least attached to a hic et nunc. One could say that there is human nature in the technical being, in the sense in which the word nature could be used to designate what remains originary, anterior even to the humanity constituted in man.”⁵² On this reading, the technical object expresses the charge of associated nature belonging to the subject who invented it. Strangely, ILFI leaves out entirely the role of technics in the relation between the human being and the world. MEOT does describe technics, but we regret that it reduces technics to a single phase, the result of the splitting in two of the “primitive magical unity.”⁵³ We think that this original unity is an abstraction, since it seems to us impossible to conceive of a pretechnical reality for human beings.

If we hypothesize that technics and the human being are in a transductive relation, we can observe resemblances between technics and the transindividual, since both help the living surpass and extend itself. This is what leads Bernard Stiegler to think an artifactual, or “prosthetic,” refoundation of the transindividual, by considering the intrinsically technological dimension of the preindividual⁵⁴. Vincent Bontems notes that Stiegler does not provide the solution to the problem Simondon raised, but transforms this problem so as to resolve it better with the help of a technical terminology. He thus performs an internal overcoming of Simondon⁵⁵.

Thus, if we remain faithful to Simondon’s analyses alone, the status of the preindividual leaves us perplexed. We are led to ask whether this reality can really be located. If it cannot, can we call Simondon a metaphysician, perhaps wrongly?

Bibliography

BACHELARD, Gaston. Le Nouvel esprit scientifique, Paris: PUF, 2013.
BARTHÉLÉMY, Jean-Hugues, and BONTEMS, Vincent. “Philosophie de la nature et artefact.” In: Appareil, 2008, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/appareil/72.
BONTEMS, Vincent. “Simondon et Bachelard,” 2019, URL: https://implications-philosophiques.org/non-classe/simondon-et-bachelard/.
DE BROGLIE, Louis. La nouvelle dynamique des quanta, Apud, Électrons et Photons, 1928.
MARGAIRAZ, Sarah. “Entre apeiron présocratique et métastabilité thermodynamique: l’idée de préindividuel chez Gilbert Simondon.” In: Methodos, 2013, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/methodos/3191.
SIMONDON, Gilbert. L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information, Grenoble: J. Million (Krisis), 2005.
SIMONDON, Gilbert. Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Paris: Aubier, 2006.
SIMONDON, Nathalie. “Quelques éléments sur la vie et les travaux de Gilbert Simondon.” URL: http://gilbert.simondon.fr/content/biographie.
WHITEHEAD, Alfred North. Procès et réalité, Gallimard, 1995.

Hereafter abbreviated as ILFI, from the French title. ↩
Hereafter abbreviated as MEOT, from the French title. ↩
See Sarah Margairaz’s study of Presocratic thought on genesis and its limits, “Entre apeiron présocratique et métastabilité thermodynamique: l’idée de préindividuel chez Gilbert Simondon,” Methodos, 2013, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/methodos/3191. ↩
Simondon dedicated his main thesis to him. ↩
We devote a section to explaining this last concept. ↩
SIMONDON, Gilbert. L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information, Grenoble: J. Million (Krisis), 2005, p. 24. ↩
SIMONDON, Gilbert. Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Paris: Aubier, 2006, p. 22. ↩
Ibid., p. 226. ↩
ILFI, p. 25. ↩
MEOT, p. 69. ↩
See the chapter of MEOT entitled “Evolution of technical reality.” ↩
WHITEHEAD, Alfred North. Procès et réalité, Gallimard, 1995, p. 92, quoted here in Whitehead’s own words from Process and Reality. Put in Whiteheadian terms, we claim that the creative advance produces a multiplicity of lines of becoming. ↩
ILFI, p. 32. ↩
Ibid., p. 311. ↩
See the chapter of MEOT entitled “Present-day problems.” ↩
ILFI, p. 34. ↩
The concept of disparation is borrowed from the theory of stereoscopic vision. ↩
We will look in more detail at the contribution of quantum physics to the thought of individuation in the chapter on Bachelard. ↩
“History of the notion of the individual” is a chapter of the supplements to ILFI. ↩
ILFI, p. 204. ↩
Ibid., p. 29. ↩
MEOT, p. 31. ↩
See the part devoted to the rhythm of technical progress in the chapter of MEOT entitled “Genesis of the technical object.” ↩
ILFI, p. 320. ↩
See the chapter of ILFI entitled “Form and matter.” ↩
A term borrowed from the systems approach. ↩
Concretization is the increase in functional synergy between the different elements of a technical object. ↩
MEOT, p. 23. ↩
Ibid., p. 187. ↩
ILFI, p. 31. ↩
Ibid., p. 31. ↩
Ibid., p. 191. ↩
Ibid., p. 250. ↩
Ibid., p. 29. ↩
This thesis was never completed, however. ↩
SIMONDON, Nathalie. “Quelques éléments sur la vie et les travaux de Gilbert Simondon.” URL: http://gilbert.simondon.fr/content/biographie. ↩
BACHELARD, Gaston. Le Nouvel esprit scientifique, Paris: PUF, 2013, p. 23. ↩
Ibid., p. 27. ↩
Ibid., p. 113. ↩
Ibid., p. 110. ↩
Ibid., p. 34. ↩
Ibid., p. 51. ↩
Ibid., p. 55. ↩
Ibid., p. 69. ↩
DE BROGLIE, Louis. La nouvelle dynamique des quanta, Apud, Électrons et Photons, 1928, p. 105. ↩
ILFI, p. 26. ↩
The wave-corpuscle duality thus becomes a wave-corpuscle pair. ↩
BONTEMS, Vincent. “Simondon et Bachelard,” 2019, URL: https://implications-philosophiques.org/non-classe/simondon-et-bachelard/. ↩
Simondon’s habit of not consistently citing the authors who inspired him contributes to this label. ↩
ILFI, p. 252. ↩
Ibid., p. 274. ↩
MEOT, p. 247. ↩
The primitive magical unity is a central element of the theory of the phases of culture set out in MEOT. Its status is also problematic. ↩
BARTHÉLÉMY, Jean-Hugues, and BONTEMS, Vincent. “Philosophie de la nature et artefact.” In: Appareil, 2008. We borrow here the terms Jean-Hugues Barthélémy uses to describe Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy. ↩
Ibid. ↩