The Philosophy of Simondon by Kirkpatrick Graeme; Chabot Pascal; Krefetz Aliza

Author:Kirkpatrick, Graeme; Chabot, Pascal; Krefetz, Aliza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Between Technology and Individuation
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2013-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Notes

1 P. Descoqs, Essai critique sur l’hylémorphisme, Paris: Beauchesne, 1924.

2 L’Individu et sa genèse, p. 39.

6

The Crystal

Simondon shares the cyberneticists’ ideal of a unified theory of being, based on the concept of information. This concept extends far beyond the philosophy of technology: it is also applicable to physics, biology and psychology.1 Information may be understood in three different senses: syntactical, semantic and pragmatic. The first sense concerns problems in the transmission of information. Its initial applications are strictly technical. Questions of syntax concern how information is to be coded, the channels of transmission, the physical capacities of information systems, and issues of redundancy and noise. Information may also be approached from a semantic angle. In this case, the primary concern is the meaning of the symbols that constitute a message. An important issue for semantics is identifying the common conventions that must be shared by the transmitter and receiver of a signal so that the meaning of the information transmitted may be mutually understood. Finally, information lends itself to a pragmatic analysis: How does it affect the behaviours of transmitter and receiver?2

The pragmatic study of information has more than a few things in common with the scholastic investigation of forms. In both cases, the primary concern is to discover the effect of form on matter. The theory of information allows us to reformulate this question.3 It asks: What is the effect of information on the milieu that receives it? Dissatisfied with the logical conception of form, Simondon revisited the medieval question of individuation with the notion of information in hand. Some of the scholastics held that all forms were static. Those who believed in a unique, rigid form maintained that its sole function was its determining effect on matter. This function is diametrically opposed to dynamism: its adherents refused to accept that a form could be active on its own, independent of its role in specifying the properties of individual things. Simondon favoured the opposite interpretation. In his theory, form and action are combined in a single notion: information. ‘It is necessary to replace the notion of form with that of information’, he wrote.4 Like the cyberneticists, he viewed information as an operation. Its function is not only one of determination; it causes a mutation, it triggers change. Information becomes the factor that sets in motion the process of individuation. This active role was first described by Simondon in the context of crystallization.

Simondon observed the growth of a crystal in its mother-water. He studied the parameters that determine the nature of a crystal: temperature, pressure, shock, chemical composition. He contemplated ancient sources which saw the perfection of the crystal as a link between the organic and the inorganic. He also studied the refraction of light through crystalline structures and the implications of these structures for atomic theory. Finally, he alighted upon the crystal as the paradigm for his theory of individuation.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Abbé Haüy advanced the hypothesis that crystals were formed periodically from an ‘integral molecule’.

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