Organization and information in Simondon’s theory of individuation

ABSTRACT

This article explores the notions of organization and information in Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation. It confronts these notions with ideas from cybernetics and especially Alan Turing’s work. The ‘universal machine’ opens new ways of understanding the relations between humans and machines, and highlights an impasse in Simondon’s theory. These concepts act as precursors to post-structuralist philosophy and Gilles Deleuze’s oeuvre.

KEYWORDS:

• Simondon
• information
• transindividuality
• cybernetics
• technical ensembles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1.

It is, essentially, the operation commanded by a free man and executed by a slave (…) The active character of the form, the passive character of the matter, comes from the conditions of transmission of the order that implies a social hierarchy (…) The distinction between form and matter, between body and soul, reflects a city which has citizens in opposition to slaves (Simondon 2005a, 51, our translation).

2. Besides Simondon's Deux leçons sur l’animal et l’homme, we can quote about this blurring of boundaries the following extract from ILFI (2005a, 165, note 6, our translation, our emphasis):

This means that there are not on the one hand only-living beings and on the other hand living and thinking beings: animals probably just find themselves less frequently than humans in a psychic situation. The human, having available more extended psychic possibilities, in particular due to the resources of symbolism, more frequently calls on psyche; it is the vital situation that is exceptional in the human, and thus humans feel more destitute in it. But it is not a matter of a nature, an essence, serving to found an anthropology; it is simply that a threshold is crossed. Animals are better endowed for living than for thinking, human beings better for thinking than for living. Both of them live and think, normally or exceptionally.