Abstract
The aim of this article is to highlight and discuss two problems of the biological philosophy of technology. In particular, I will analyse the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and Gilbert Simondon, and I will show that (a) the meaning of the analogy between technical and natural objects that underlies the approach of the biological philosophy of technology remains problematic and (b) the biological approach to technology is very effective for analysing tools and machines, but is not sufficient to describe the so-called information technologies. In the last part of the article, I will argue that, in order to understand information technologies, it is necessary to integrate the biological approach to technology with a grammatological approach. I will try to show that, next to the tool and the machine, there is a third category of technical objects that can be better described using the notion of “writing” proposed by one of the masters of the so-called French Thought, Jacques Derrida.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Not applicable.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
Notes
Guchet (2010) highlights this critique of the reduction of the technical object to the anthropic point of view very clearly. At the same time, he shows that for Simondon, it is not simply a question of destroying all humanism, but rather of elaborating another humanism in which there is an essential space for technology.
“Simondon is careful not to take this point too far. He never asserts that the mode of existence of technologies is entirely commensurate with that of living things” (Chabot 2003).
It seems to me that Guchet also recognises some ambiguity in some of Simondon’s expressions: “Il est vrai que certaines analyses peuvent prêter à confusion et indiquer une forme d’anthropomorphisme de la technique chez Simondon” (Guchet 2008, 143).
It seems to me that Guchet (2008) goes in this direction by insisting on the epistemological value of the analogy between organism and technical object, stressing several times that this analogy does not lead to a “naturalisation des techniques”.
The importance of the notion of the operational chain in the theoretical framework of GS is underlined by Audouze (2002, 286).
The distinction between tool and instrument is developed by Simondon later, in a 1968 course entitled L’invention et le développent des techniques (Simondon 2005, 88). Compared to MEOT, this course more explicitly elaborates a taxonomy that implies a clear distinction between tool and machine. Simondon explains that it is necessary to distinguish a “troisième type de dispositif qui n’est ni utile ni instrument, mais ustensile ou appareil” (Simondon 2005, 94). The characteristic of these technical objects is their autonomy with respect to the energy provided by the human body: these objects “sont alimentés en énergie indépendante de celle que peut fournir le corps humaine” (Simondon 2005, 94). The ideal machine results from the integration of the tool, the instrument, and the apparatus (appareil). It seems clear, reading that course, that the machine is the technical object that can properly be considered as an organism (“comme un organisme”) (Simondon 2005, 95).
De Angelis and Romele (2015) show how Simondon’s categories can be used to think about phenomena such as online social networks: it seems significant to me, however, that the theoretical reference here is not the theory of concretisation proposed in MEOT, but rather the theory of the transindividual and that the analogy is no longer between the body and the machine but that between the social network and the linguistic network.
To think of the Internet from Simondon’s perspective, one would probably have to put together the considerations on the associated milieu developed in MEOT and the considerations on technical networks developed in the course L’invention et le développent des techniques (Simondon 2005, 99) and in the texts collected in Sur la technique (Simondon 2014, 84 and ff.; 307 and ff.; 417 and ff.; 437 and ff.).
The texts collected in Communication et information [CI] (Simondon 2010) certainly represent a broadening of the theoretical perspective with respect to MEOT. However, the critique that I propose in this essay can also be applied to CI. Simondon displays, as usual, an extraordinary encyclopaedic spirit, using findings from ethology and biology. This approach allows him to compare the visual and sound signals produced by animals (e.g. the sounds produced by bees, or dolphins, or birds) to the signals produced by communication tools (e.g. the telegraph, radio, or television). But, even in this case, it is worth noting that the analogy, while meaningful and useful, is only partially valid. The comparison with the animal world is useful as long as it is a question of understanding the tools whose function is to enhance perception, but it is no longer adequate when it comes to understanding information technologies. These technologies are forms of writing and not simply prostheses of our perceptual systems, precisely because they involve complex processes of coding, elaborating, and storing data. In order to understand these processes of writing, the comparison with the animal and plant world is not very helpful.
Among the authors who have recently attempted to think about digital technologies and the Internet from a grammatological perspective, we should mention at least Ferraris (2018; 2021) and Stiegler (2013). In § 3 of the article, I criticise Stiegler, but certainly there is a continuity between Derrida’s reflection on writing and Stiegler’s reflection on technique. In my opinion, Stiegler has the merit of having developed some aspects of Derridian thought by giving it a more systematic and accessible form. In particular, it seems to me that the notion of tertiary retention (Stiegler, B. 1998, 2002, 2009) is in many ways a reformulation of the Derridean problem of writing.
Floridi’s position, which outlines the progressive absorption of reality into the “infosphere”, seems to me to risk falling into this idealism of information: which, on the other hand, Derrida’s notion of writing manages to avoid. From a grammatological point of view, one can never claim that “objects and processes are dephysicalized, in the sense that they tend to be seen as support-independent” (Floridi 2014, 50). For Derrida, it would not be correct to say that since “information can so easily be decoupled from its support” then “the actual format, medium, and language in which data, and hence information, are encoded is often irrelevant and disregardable” (Floridi, 2010, 25). On the contrary, Derrida would probably say that the support is always relevant, because it is an unavoidable condition for all communication and also because it produces effects of meaning (and thus modifies the information). Also the “informational metaphysics” that is proposed in some passages (Floridi, 2010, 70) of Information. A very short introduction seems to me to risk being idealistic. In some ways, Floridi’s position seems the inverted image of the biology of technique. The BPT persuasively explains the analogy between body and machine, but it is weak when it comes to explaining information technologies; on the contrary, Floridi’s philosophy of information convincingly explains information technologies, but it risks being one-sided in affirming the priority of information over the physical medium that carries it.
Although Derrida does not feature much in the essays included in Romele and Terrone (2018), the idea that digital media are first and foremost “Recording Devices” is close to the idea of writing technology that I use in this article. In particular, it seems to me that the contribution of Bachimont outlines a theoretical perspective that has many points of contact with the Derridean one. Bachimont rightly points out that the planetary diffusion of the Internet implies a change in the relationship between recording and communication: “whereas, until then, we used to communicate without recording, and the issue of recording was eventually raised after the communication, the IP imposed recording in the form of packets first, in order to communicate these same packets in a second stage” (Bachimont 2018, 19). In Derridean terms, one could say that this change in the relationship between recording and communication is a change in writing. But the change in the forms of writing also implies a change in the content of meaning that the writing has to convey: “If we now register to communicate, this implies that communication is conditioned by the technical choices of the recording” (Bachimont 2018, 20). Bachimont’s position seems to me particularly interesting because it explains the non-neutrality of the medium.
References
Audouze, F. (2002). Leroi-Gourhan, a philosopher of technique and evolution. Journal of Archaeological Research, 10 (4).
Alsberg, P. (1970 [1922]). In quest of man. A biological approach to the problem of man’s place in nature. Oxford, etc.: Pergamon Press.
Bruno Bachimont (2018), Between formats and data: When communication becomes recording, in Romele, A. and Terrone, E. (Eds.). Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillian.
Bergson, H. (2007 [1907]). Creative evolution (Trans. by A. Mitchell). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Canguilhem, G. (2008 [1965]). Knowledge of Life (Trans. S. Geroulanos and D. Ginsburg). Ney York: Fordham.
Chabot, P. (2003). The philosophy of simondon. Between technology and individuation (Trans. by A. Krefetz). London-New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Clarizio, E. (2021). La vie technique. Une philosophie biologique de la technique. Hermann.
De Angelis, R., and Romele, A. (2015) Pensare le reti sociali online con Gilbert Simondon. In A. Givigliano, and C. Stancati (eds.) Prospettive sul luogo. Discussione di un oggetto sociale. Roma: Aracne.
Derrida, J. (1982 [1968]) The pit and the pyramid: Introduction to Hegel’s semiology, trans. by A. Bass, in Margins of Philosophy, Brighton: The Harvester Press.
Derrida, J. (1996 [1995]) Archive fever, trans. by E. Prenowitz, Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1997 [1967]). Of grammatology (Trans. by G. Chakravorty Spivak). Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, J. (1989). Memoires for Paul de Man (Trans. by C. Lindsay, J. Culler, E. Cadava and P. Kamuf). Ney York: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, J. (2001 [1967]). Writing and difference (Trans. by A. Bass). London and New York: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (2001). Papier machine. Galilée.
C Martino Di 2019 Corpus sivecultura Nota Su Tecnica e Corpi Aisthesis 12 2 39 50
Di Martino C. (2017). Viventi umani e non umani. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.
Du Bois-Reymond, A. (1906). Erfindung Und Erfinder. Springer.
Ferraris, M. (2021). Documanità. Bari-Roma: Laterza.
Ferraris, M. (2018). From Capital to Documediality. In A. Romele and E. Terrone (eds.), Towards a philosophy of digital media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillian.
Floridi, L. (2010). Information. A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Floridi, L. (2014). The Fourth Revolution: How the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford University Press.
Guchet X. (2008). Évolution technique et objectivité technique chez Leroi-Gourhan et Simondon, Appareil, 2.
Guchet, X. (2010). Pour un humanisme technologique. Culture, technique et société dans la philosophie de Gilbert Simondon. Paris: P.U.F.
Heidegger, M. (1996 [1927]). Being and time (Trans. by Joan Stambaugh). Albany, New York: SUNY Press.
Heidegger, M. (1995). The fundamental concepts of metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude (Trans. by McNeill W. and Walker, N.). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Kant, I. (2000 [1790]). Critique of the power of judgment (ed. by Paul Guyer), Cambridge, New York etc.: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I. (1965). First introduction to the critique of judgment (Trans. by James Haden). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1943). L’Homme et la matière. Albin Michel.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1973). Évolution et techniques, vol I”Milieu et techniques ”. Albin Michel.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1993 [1964]. Gesture and speech (Trans. by A. Bostock Berger). Cambridge etc: MIT Press.
Lindberg, S. (2016). Derrida’s quasi-technique. Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 46, No. 3.
Odling-Smee, F., Laland, K., & Feldman, M. (2003). Niche construction: The neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press.
Romele, A. and Terrone, E. (Eds.) (2018). Towards a philosophy of digital media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillian.
Sartre, J-P. (2007 [1947]). Existentialism is an humanism (Trans. by Carol Macomber). New Haven-London: Yale University Press.
Scheler, M. (2009 [1928]). The human place in the cosmos (Trans. by M. S. Frings). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Simondon, G. (2005). L’invention dans le techniques. Courses et conférences, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Simondon, G. (2010). Communication et information. Cours et conférences, Chatou: Les Éditions de la transparence
Simondon, G. (2014). Sur la technique. PUF.
Simondon, G. (2017). [1958]). Univocal, Minneapolis.
Spengler O. (2016 [1932]). Man and technics: A contribution to a philosophy of life, Routledge.
Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and time, 1: The fault of Epimetheus (trans by R. Beardsworth and G. Collins). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Stiegler, B. (2002). Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews (with Jacques Derrida). Polity Press.
Stiegler, B. (2009). Technics and time, 2: Disorientation. Stanford University Press.
Stiegler, B. (2010). Technics and time, 3: Cinematic time and the question of Malaise. Stanford University Press.
Stiegler, B. (2013). Die Aufklärung in the age of philosophical engineering. In M. Hildebrandt et al. (Eds.), Digital Enlightenment Yearbook 2013. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Stiegler, B. (2016). Automatic society, Volume 1: The Future of Work. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Uexküll, J. (2010 [1934]). A foray into the worlds of animals and humans with a theory of meaning (Trans. by D. O’Neil, J.). Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics Approval
Not applicable.
Consent to Participate
Not applicable.
Consent for Publication
Not applicable.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Philosophy of Technology and the French Thought.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Feyles, M.M. Two Problems of the Biological Philosophy of Technology. Philos. Technol. 35, 39 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00518-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00518-2