Abstract
The possibility of a science of the ‘intermediate zone’ between the individual and society – i.e. transindividual individuation – is elaborated by Simondon in direct confrontation with Norbert Wiener’s project of a cybernetic science of the social system. On the basis of Canguilhem’s definition of society as ‘machine and life’, he contrasts Wiener’s social theory, grounded on the concepts of homeostasis and self-regulation through feedback. Hence it is possible to question which kind of model is provided in Simondon’s theory of social systems, and, in particular, which kind of regulation do we face, according to Simondon, where society is concerned. He tends to abandon the ontological opposition tout court between artificial and natural structures, and rather to question the processes of regulation in order to ground his theory of the social system on a model for the understanding of all systems as internally discontinuous, and whose functioning exceeds the conservative dynamics typical of homeostatic processes.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Wiener’s paper on L’homme et la machine (1962), introduced by Simondon at Royaumont.
- 2.
- 3.
See also the entry ‘Régulation’ in the Encyclopédie Universelle (1972), where Canguilhem explains how the concept passed from the biological to the sociological field through the mediation of Malthus and Comte.
- 4.
Canguilhem formulates his hypothesis concerning the origin of the concept of adaptation within the same conceptual horizon of Simondon’s hypothesis on the ‘technical’ origins of hylomorphism (see above, Sect. 2.1): ‘After a quarter of a century, this concept has received such an application in psychology and sociology, often inopportune, that it can only be used in the most critical spirit, even in biology. The psychosocial definition of the normal in terms of adaptedness implies a concept of society which surreptitiously and wrongly assimilates it to an environment, i.e. to a system of determinisms. On the contrary, it is a system of constraints which, already and before all relations between it and the environment, contains collective norms for evaluating the quality of these relations […] It is a popular concept describing technical activity. The human being adapts his tools and indirectly his organs and behaviour to this material, or to that situation’ (Canguilhem 1943: 213–14).
- 5.
For instance, in the process of the synchronisation of two oscillators, the emission and the reception of information are activities whose actual contemporaneity cybernetics cannot explain through a sequential theory – although complex – of feedback (MEOT 140–41).
- 6.
Lecture held at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (1955) (later collected in Ecrits sur la médecine without the final discussion). The lecture presents many themes that will appear in the section on the Nouvelles réflexions concernant le normal et le pathologique (1963–66), the contents of which Simondon therefore partially knew when writing Individuation. Canguilhem will only sketch there a possible extension of the concept of organisation to fields different from the biological one: ‘The correlativity of social norms – technological, economic, juridical – tends to make their virtual unity an organisation. It is not easy to say what the concept of organisation is in relation to that of organism, whether we are dealing with a more general structure than the organism, both more formal and richer; or whether we are dealing with a model which, relative to the organism held as a basic type of structure, has been singularised by so many restrictive conditions that it could have no more consistency than a metaphor’ (Canguilhem 1943: 185–86).
- 7.
Again in the Nouvelles réflexions, Canguilhem draws a scheme concerning the relationship between rules of adaptation: ‘external to the adjusted multiple’ in the social field, and ‘immanent, presented without being represented, acting with neither deliberation nor calculation’ in organisms (Canguilhem 1943: 186).
- 8.
Also in the Nouvelles réflexions Canguilhem does quote Bergson: ‘One philosopher, at least, has noticed and brought to light the organic character of moral norms, much as they are first of all social norms. It is Bergson in Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion analysing what he calls “the totality of obligation”’ (Canguilhem 1943: 185).
- 9.
The whole of Simondon’s argument is built against the hypothesis of Ashby’s homeostat, that is against the idea that the functioning of an organism can be entirely explained and reproduced through apparatuses of homeostatic regulation. In fact invention, as far as it is made possible thanks to the presence of thresholds of indeterminacy within the system, is not an entirely homeostatic regulation. The fact that only at the level of organisms the functioning of the system crosses the threshold of invention entails the irreducibility of life to purely deterministic laws. One can speak of ‘life’ only when the functioning of a system overcomes the threshold of invention (i.e. the trigger of processes which compel the system itself to call into question the configuration of its own internal and external relations). This cannot happen to machines precisely because of the high degree of determinism which makes them always depend on an external regulation. Or better, if invention took place, this definition of the machine would not fit anymore. On these grounds we might perhaps abandon today a substantialist logic of structures for a logic of operations when trying to conceptualise a machine endowed with biological features.
- 10.
‘The vast domain of coelenterates shows a transitional zone between non-individuated and totally-individuated vital systems; the study of these mixed systems allows for the establishment of precious functional equivalences’ (I 169). Duhem (2008) makes of the ‘thanatological character’ of the individual the centre of his analysis. He poses the problem in terms of finitude and creative force, referring to Jankélévitch and Nietzsche. Making the whole problem converge into the category of the ‘pure individual’ Duhem concludes that the power of the pure individual contrasts the set of social functions, thus differentiating the creative force characterising the individual from a derivative or ‘secondary power’ in which command would consist (Duhem 2008: 16–18). The idea is further developed in Duhem 2013a, where the author explores the limitations and opportunities offered by Simondon’s ‘thanatological’ thought.
- 11.
‘The alternation of the individual and the colony leaves its place, in the superior species, to the simultaneity of individual life and society. This complicates the individual, by putting in it a double cluster of individual (instinct) and social (tendencies) functions’ (I 171).
- 12.
‘This notion of transduction can be generalised. Presented as pure in different kinds of transductors, it exists as a regulative function in all machines with a certain degree of indeterminacy […] human being, and more in general the living, are essentially transductors’ (MEOT 143–44). In a discussion following his paper at the conference on Mécanologie, Simondon thus responds to an intervention which invites him to expand his model: ‘an event is not closed in itself; in the psychic domain it is relevant mainly for its repercussions. Now, the word “repercussion” is not correct, it would be better to employ the term amplification’ (MEC 143).
- 13.
It is perhaps in this sense that Petitot (2004) claims it is possible to detect a ‘superiority of the individual over the collective’ in Simondon’s thought.
- 14.
Simondon’s complete bibliography and a list of abbreviations are provided in the Appendix.
References
Simondon’s complete bibliography and a list of abbreviations are provided in the Appendix.
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Bardin, A. (2015). Social Homeostasis and the Exceeding Normativity. In: Epistemology and Political Philosophy in Gilbert Simondon. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9831-0_7
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