Form and Energy

In an effort to speed things up, I'm going to attempt to cover all of Chapter 2 in a single post.  This is a bit ambitious, since it contains both a number of subtle philosophical points and a bunch of detailed technical discussion.  However, I think the basic thrust of the chapter is pretty clear.  Last time we came to the conclusion that the individual, properly speaking, is whatever can continue a process of individuation.  We also know that this process requires both certain energetic conditions as a well as a singularity that allows for some of the system's potential energy to become actual.  But we're still not sure how this process might function in the absence of human intervention, because we only discovered the need to describe it as a result of discussing the hylomorphic schema's failure to adequately account for the individual physical brick produce in a technical operation.  So in this chapter, Simondon will move on from his critique of hylomorphism to provide a positive model of physical individuation that illustrates exactly how the process works in nature.  While he uses the term "allagmatic" to describe this operation, we could as easily call it the 'crystallization schema' of individuation, because a detailed consideration of crystal growth will serve as the fundamental analogy for all purely physical individuation.  Why does Simdondon choose to investigate crystallization?  Because it provides a very pure example of an individuation that immediately subverts the paradigm of substance.  Water vapor and ice are precisely not different substances, yet they are clearly different individuals.  In fact, it's not even clear if we should consider water vapor an individual at all, or if so, on what level.  So studying crystallization provides a perfect way to study how the individual is produced from the pre-individual, which is of course the overarching goal of the whole book.

Structures and Potential Energy

1.2.1.1 The Potential Energy and the Reality of the System; Equivalence of Potential Energies; Dissymmetry and Energetic Exchanges

With that orientation in mind, we can see that this chapter consists in Simondon separately taking up each part of the process of individuation -- the energetic conditions, the singularity, and their relation.  He begins by discussing what it means for a system to have potential energy.  While this is related to the standard definition of potential energy in physics, Simondon wants more precise than usual about how we use this term.  Potential energy only exists as such if it can be converted into some real change in the system.  What we're interested in is the system's potential to support individuation.  This effectively precludes a system resting at some stable equilibrium from having any potential energy -- by definition, these are systems that are no longer changing, and so by implication they cannot be involved in an ongoing process of individuation.  It's instructive to consider the physicist's immediate objection to this definition of potential energy.  For example, don't we usually think of a hot gas as having potential energy even though it may exist in a state of internal equilibrium where the average temperature is uniform throughout?  Of course we do, but notably only because we never imagine that the hot gas is the only thing in the system.  We imagine hooking it up to something, say another material that it heats up or a piston that it pushes.  But then it's not the gas itself that has potential energy, but this larger system that we imagined coupled to it, a system which we imagine changing precisely because it is not at equilibrium.  So if we try to imagine a system that has potential energy in itself, we are forced consider a non-equilibrium system that has some sort of asymmetry or heterogeneity built into it. 

The capacity for an energy to be potential is strictly linked to the presence of a heterogeneity, i.e. of dissymmetry relative to another energetic support (I, 55)

Simondon draws some profound consequences from this relatively simple observation.  Because it means that energy cannot be a simple scalar quantity that belongs to a single body in itself.  There is no absolute energy.  Energy requires duality, multiplicity.  A single energetic system must already have parts.  Energy then must be about the relation between parts, and not just characterize the individual substances that comprise those parts.  In fact, for Simondon as much as Deleuze, what is real is always relation, and never the in-itself.  However, what mainly interests Simondon in this chapter is the way that the reality of a relation like potential energy can actually be converted into 'substance' (though this is speaking loosely, since he's already described how the substance of substance, as it were, is relation).  Potential energy can be actualized.  As we'll see, this is what happens when a crystal grows in a suitable medium.  

But the reality of potential energy is not that of an object or a substance consisting in itself and "having no need of anything else in order to exist"; indeed, it requires a system, i.e. at least another term. No doubt, we must struggle against the habit that leads us to grant the highest degree of being to sub- stance conceived as absolute reality, i.e. reality without relation. Relation is not a pure epiphenomenon; it is convertible into substantial terms, and this conversion is reversible, like that of potential energy into actual energy. (I, 56)

But before we get to this point where potential energy is actualized in an irreversible way by literally crystallizing into a substance, SImondon seems to want to make sure we understand the subtleties of his definition by illustrating some cases where the actualization of a potential energy is reversible.  These are systems where potential energy can be converted into a structure and then converted back into potential energy with no loss.  Though, since Simondon illustrates the idea by considering different types of pendulums, his example ends up straining our normal usage of "structure".  

He considers three types of pendulums that transform energy in three different ways.  First, there's the familiar pendulum of freshman physics, which converts the gravitational potential energy of maximum deflection in one direction into the kinetic energy of the swinging bob and back into an equal gravitational potential at the point of maximum deflection in the opposite direction.  Second, there's the curious Holweck-Lejay pendulum, which inverts the situation and fixes the bob above the rotation point at the end of a flexible spring which oscillates back and forth as the pull of gravity plays tug of war with the bend in the spring.   This non-linear pendulum effectively converts a potential energy equal to the difference between the gravitational potential and the elastic potential into kinetic energy and back again.  So if the spring were perfectly balanced with gravity, the period of oscillation would be infinite, which is to say that it would not oscillate at all (observing the frequency of this pendulum apparently provides a much more accurate way of measuring gravity, based on choosing a spring with a potential very close that of gravity, so that the period produced is quite long and easy to measure accurately).  Third, Simondon discusses two coupled simple pendulums.  In this case, the underlying potential energy driver is again gravity, but if we start only one pendulum swinging we see that this potential is converted into a kinetic energy, which serves as a potential energy to start the other oscillator moving. So it appears as if the potential energy is being transferred from one part of the system to another.  All of these examples illustrate the way potential energy can be converted into a "structure" -- in this case the behavior of motion or rest of the pendulums -- and back into potential energy.  And in each case, this potential energy depends on some asymmetry in the system that prevents it from stopping at its point of greatest stability.  The simple pendulum is symmetrical with respect to displacements about the bottom position, but these positions together have an identical asymmetric potential with respect to that point.  The Holweck-Lejay pendulum relies on a carefully balanced asymmetry between gravitational and elastic forces.  And the coupled pendulums obviously represent a system with two distinct parts (as long as they are not started with equal amplitude and phase, in which case the problem reduces to the first type of pendulum). It's their asymmetry that allows each of these systems to change potential energy into kinetic and back again.  Which is basically the definition of oscillation.

1.2.1.2  Different Orders of Potential Energy; Notions of Phase Changes and of the Stable and Metastable Equilibrium of a State. Tammann's Theory

As we mentioned though, not all transformations of potential energy are reversible, and Simondon now takes up the example of crystal formation to illustrate exactly how energy can be more permanently converted into something we would typically call a structure.  In the context though, it's important to note that this doesn't entail any loss of energy.  Simondon still conceives of this as a conversion of one type of potential energy into another, only this time it's not an interconversion of the potentials at the tops of a pendulum's swing, nor a conversion of the difference between gravitational and elastic potential into motion, but a conversion of one order or scale of potential energy into another.  This changing of the order of potential energy turns out to be exactly what we mean my thermodynamic irreversibility.  Entropy always increases in a closed system because energy that began as macroscopic is converted into microscopic form.  A crystal of course is an example of the opposite sort of irreversibility because it constitutes a (local) entropy decrease. In fact, the arising of a structure and a local entropy decrease are almost synonymous.  A crystal structure results from the conversion of a microscopic potential energy into a macroscopic form.  It's a link between these two orders of energy.  In a sense, macroscopic form is nothing other than microscopic organization, but this organization is only possible with the emission or absorption of potential energy.  Which is precisely to say that energy can be converted into structure.

Simondon illustrates his philosophical idea that crystallization represents a substantialization of relation (potential energy) with a particularly obscure and subtle technical example.  He explains Tammann's theory of the crystallization of an amorphous solid in enough detail that I had to read it several times before I figured out what was going on.  I don't think it's worth going into the details except to say that he could have used a better phase diagram.  The overall point he's trying to convey is that there can be two forms of a material, an amorphous one like glass and a crystalline one, both of which we normally consider 'solid', that can convert into one another under certain energetic circumstances.  But these conversions are inevitably accompanied by the emission or absorption of energy in the form of latent heat or of volumetric change of the crystal.  So it's the energy of an overall system that defines the limits of where a structurally stable individual can form. 

The limits of a structural type of domain of stability are determined by energetic considerations. This is why, in order to broach the study of physical individuation properly speaking, we wanted to define the energetic aspect of the relation between two physical structures. An energetic characteristic is linked to every structure, but, inversely, a modification of the structural characteristic of this system can correspond to any modification of the energetic conditions of this system. (I, 67)

Conversely, the formation of an individual crystal corresponds to, and in fact can reveal, an energetic change in a system.  Some of the potential energy of an amorphous solid can be converted into a crystal.  And then this crystal can melt and release its structure as potential energy again.  But these types of conversions of potential energy are not generally reversible because they involve a discontinuity between two completely different states of the system. 

Conversely, the state changes undergone by the system forces us to consider a certain energy linked to the structure, an energy which is indeed a potential energy, but which is not capable of an ongoing transformation; for this reason, it cannot be considered suitable for the case of identity or of equality defined above. This energy can only be measured in a state change of the system; while the state remains, it is conflated with the very conditions of stability of this state. This is why we will choose to name those energies that express the limits of stability of a structural state as structural potential energies. These potential energies constitute the real source of the formal conditions of possible geneses. (I, 68)

The overall point is basically that structure = change in energy.

Individuation and System States

1.2.2.1 Individuation and Crystalline Allotropic Forms; Being and Relation

So some systems can transform their potential energy into a structure under some conditions.  This phase transition behavior is a necessary condition for individuation.  But are the energetic and material conditions alone sufficient to account for the individual produced?  Simondon thinks not, and he illustrates this conclusion by considering another situation where an amorphous matter can crystallize in either of two possible configurations (allotropy is probably best known as what distinguishes graphite from diamond despite the fact that they are both just carbon lattices).  Even at the same temperature and pressure, supercooled liquid sulfur can crystallize as either prismatic or octahedral crystals (or, it turns out, in a bewildering array of other forms).  Which one (if either) of these forms appears depends on whether a seed or germ of that type is present in the material as it cools.  Even super cold water won't freeze without a crystal nucleus to get it started.  Again, I'll skip the technical details because the important point is just that the process of individuation requires a singularity to get started in addition to some appropriate energetic conditions.  Which means that individuation isn't simple determined by the instantaneous conditions of the system, but depends on its entire history of development.

A stable individuality is thus formed when two conditions are met: a certain structure must correspond to a certain energetic state of the system. But this structure is not directly produced by the energetic state alone, for it is distinct from the latter; the initiation of structuration is critical; most often in crystallization germs are deposited from the exterior. Thus, there is a historical aspect to the manifestation of a structure in a substance, insofar as the structural germ must appear. Pure energetic determinism does not suffice for a substance to attain its state of stability. The beginning of structuring individuation is an event for the system in a metastable state. Thus, in general, even in the simplest process of individuation, a relation takes place between the body under consideration and the temporal existence of beings external to it that intervene as the evental conditions of its structuration. The constituted individual holds within it the synthesis of energetic and material conditions and of an informational condition, which is generally not immanent. (I, 70)

From this example we can also start to better understand how Simondon's notion of individuation doesn't really have anything to do with the individual as we normally use this term.  Individuation is always relative; the present individual is not the final individual, unless it happens to represent the lowest possible potential energy state of the system.  The same process of individuation can result in one crystal state or another, or first one then another (or vice versa).  Different individuals can result from the same individuation.  However, describing it this way presumes that we know what individuals we're talking about apart from the process of individuation.  Since this is precisely the thinking that Simondon wants to avoid, it might be more accurate to say that the individual is always the cutting edge of individuation.  The particular individual we find is always the most stable possible state of the system, given all the conditions and history.  It's what a system can do with the right energy and singularity.  When these conditions change, the individual will transform into another individual, making it a sort of 'unit' of becoming.  If, on the contrary, the individual persists, this is because that persistence represents the most stable state achievable by the system under the conditions -- conditions which necessarily include the presence and effect of the 'prior' individual, which acts as a singularity for the one following it.  We might say that the individual is constantly transforming, though sometimes into 'itself'. 

In terms of time, the individual is not in the past but in the present, for it only continues to conserve its individuality to the extent that this constitutive combination of conditions persists in and is extended by the individual itself. The individual exists such that the mixture of matter and energy that constitutes it is in the present. This is what could be called the active consistency of the individual. This is why every individual can be a condition of becoming: a stable crystal can be the germ for a metastable substance in a state of crystalline or liquid supercooling. (I, 74)

We have to use the infamous 'scare quotes' around that 'itself' because because this line of thinking opens up tricky but fascinating questions of identity.  Simondon only briefly addresses the topic in this chapter, but I suspect he will return to it in greater detail at some point (perhaps when he talks about quantum mechanics in 1.3.3.2).  The problem is that our crystal metaphor contains an ambiguity.  On the one hand, we have used the term individual almost synonymously with the precise state of the system constituted by given energetic and singular conditions.  We mean this particular crystal here, with a particular size and shape and set of defects, surrounded by a particular amount of amorphous material, and so on.  On the other hand, we sometimes seemed to mean the particular type of crystal (prismatic or octahedral) on the presumption that all crystals of that type are effectively the same individual, albeit perhaps of different sizes, which can be distinguished from other crystals and from the amorphous medium.  So are we talking about a point in phase space, or a whole region?  This ambiguity seems to be coupled to another ambiguity in the text or translation.  Sometimes the phrase "particular being" appears where we would expect "individual" to be.

... it is possible based on the discontinuities of conditions to define types that correspond to domains of stability or metastability; then, within these types, it is possible to define particular beings that differ from one another based on that which (within the limits of the type) is capable of a finer, sometimes continuous variation, like the speed of cooling. (I, 72)

Perhaps "mu" is the best response to this ambiguity.  The individual is neither a point nor a region in phase space, but something more like the possibility of movement through this space.  Unfortunately, I don't understand that answer well enough to avoid getting hit with a stick.  What seems clear to me at this point is that Simondon is trying to explain the origin of macroscopic individuals like a crystal we can see.  At this level of scale, the particular being we find acts like a point within a region marked off as, for example, "ETAT CRISTALLIN" on the phase space diagram on pg. 62.  That's because, as his example of volcanic rocks (pg. 72) better indicates, this region is never pure.  No macroscopic crystal consists in a perfect lattice of a single type (pg. 73).  However, it's important to note that this does not mean that the real individuals are the pure types of crystal that any mixed macroscopic crystal consists of.  From a macroscopic perspective, those pure type are merely abstractions.  All we have in front of us is a real crystal in all its impure complexity, whose detailed structure reflects the entire history of its genesis.  The trajectory of that history tells us about the type and the particularity of the crystal at the same time.  The fact that it passed into a certain region of phase space through a discontinuous structural transformation (ie. crystallization) determined its type, while the particular point in that region tells us about the finer details of the structure that can vary continuously from crystal to crystal.  So type and particularity aren't different level of ontology, they're just names for discontinuous and continuous properties of a real individual.

There are types because these conditions vary discontinuously by delimiting domains of stability; but because within these domains of stability certain parameters, which are part of the conditions, vary more finely, each particular being is different from a certain number of others. The original particularity of a being is not different in nature from its typological reality. The particular being does not possess its most singular characteristics any more so than its typological characteristics. Both the former and the latter are individual because they result from the encounter of energetic conditions and singularities, the latter of which are historical and local. (I, 73)

Those final two lines articulate a very subtle point that might seem somewhat academic in the case of a macroscopic crystal.  I would actually have been tempted to state it almost the opposite way Simondon did.  It's not that a type possesses a certain range of possible variations in characteristics which then possess individuals that instantiate those particular variables.  This is how we imagine the model of genus and species working -- like a top down tree.  Instead, its that an individual possesses a type and a particularity because of how it was formed. The real given is the individual, or rather the process of individuation which at any moment results in a more or less stable individual.  The problem is not that type and particularity don't mean anything real or are merely human imposed abstractions.  The trajectory of individuation has real continuities and discontinuities.  But an individual isn't built from these types and their variation or from a synthesis of types.  The individual is simply the unique trajectory.

As I say, this distinction is subtle, and doesn't become really interesting until Simondon considers the possibility that certain systems at a microscopic level might actually possess regions of phase space that have only a finite number of points.  If we imagine that only a single value is occasionally possible, then the region would reduce to a point, and an individual passing into it what be a real and direct incarnation of a type.  In that case, every process of individuation that exhibits that discontinuous structural change would end up producing an identical individual. 

If, within the interior of the same domain of stability, conditions that are still variable are not capable of an infinity of values but merely a finite number of values, it will have to be acknowledged that the number of effectively different beings able to appear is finite. In a certain quantity of substance, there could then be several identical beings that seem indiscernible.(I, 73)

This sort of situation would represent a quantized or atomized reality.  All the hydrogen atoms are equivalent.  And Simondon considers this a perfectly real variety of individuation that often happens in nature at very small scales.  His point is just that the reality here is still the process of individuation that combines energetic and singular historical conditions.  The reality is still the individual hydrogen atom produced in just this way at just this time and place by quantum vacuum fluctuations or whatever the physicist are into these days.  But this individuality is degenerate in the mathematical sense because it reduces to a type in this particular system.  So the apparently simple individuals that atomism takes for granted are actually complex special cases of a general process of individuation.

To seek the principle of individuation in matter, form, or force is to be condemned to only explaining individuation in these seemingly simple particulars, like, for example, that of the molecule or the atom. Instead of constituting the individual's genesis, this would be to suppose this genesis as already formed in the formal, material, or energetic elements and, due to these elements already harboring individuation, to generate through composition an individuation that is in fact simpler. (I, 74)

Now we can appreciate the reason Simondon began his discussion of physical individuation by talking about allotropic crystals and not atoms.  It doesn't make sense to start a discussion of spheres with a study of the point.  Of course he believes that atoms exist and that all physical matter is a combination of atoms.  But this type of explanation doesn't get at how the individuals are made, regardless of whether its the individual matter or the individual atom that interests us.  By considering an allotropic crystal, we bypass a host of possible objections.  It's the same stuff, made of the same atoms in the same conditions that nevertheless can sometimes crystallize in two possible forms.  We can't explain the individual crystal in a reductive bottom up manner as just determined by a combination of atoms and their forces specified in some equations. Instead we have to talk about how the energetic and material conditions interact with a seed singularity in a historical process. 

Finally, Simondon rounds out this section with some light epistemology.  Though several pages were taken out of the later edition, they contain such a fascinating swipe at Kant's theory of the a priori that I can resist reflecting on them.  The basic idea is straightforward, but has some pretty startling consequences.  We've seen that for Simondon the being of the individual is fundamentally relation.  It's not a term but a process that establishes a relation between 'terms' of different orders of magnitude.  So things are relations.  But our knowledge of things is also a relation, in this case a relation between ourselves and the thing.  Which is to say that knowledge is a relation of relations.  If we assume that this second order relation is still a true relation -- an individual that connects two disparate orders of reality -- then we've discovered that our knowledge itself is actually the same sort of reality as what we usually call a thing.  In short, thoughts are things because things aren't like we thought. 

Now that we've removed the categorical gulf between thoughts and things, Kant's prohibition on our knowledge of the thing-in-itself falls apart.  The noumenon isn't a substance separated from all other substances, and in particular from a substantial self.  It's a relation.  And we have direct experience of what relation is like, both through our experience of our self and of the world around us.  In fact, it's doubtful we are or can experience anything other than relation.  So it turns out that we can know the thing-in-itself, so long as we understand that the thing is precisely not in-itself, and neither is our knowledge of it.  The a priori forms of our sensibility are not distinct from the a priori conditions of possibility of anything else, and this condition is simply relation -- the linking of asymmetrical sides of an energetic system across a singularity.  And as we'll discuss a bit more in the next section, the simplest analogy for relation is Time, whose form is pure asymmetric succession.

If noumena are indeed not pure substance but also consist of relations (like exchanges of energy or passages of structures from one domain of reality to another domain of reality), and if relation has the same status of reality as the terms themselves, as we have tried to show in the preceding examples—insofar as relation is not an accident relative to a substance but a constitutive, energetic and structural condition that is extended in the existence of constituted beings—then the a priori forms of sensibility that allow us to grasp relations because they are a power of organizing according to succession or according to simultaneity do not create an irremediable relativity of knowledge. If relation effectively has the value of truth, then both the relation within the subject and the relation between the subject and the object can have the value of reality. (I, 75)

I think this recasting of the problem of knowledge is profound because it immediately steers us away from the problem of how to judge the truth of a pure reflective knowledge.  There is no such thing.  All knowledge is as active as any other thing in the world.  In fact, the world contains only actions, only verbs, that create passages from one state to another.  And as a part of the world, our knowledge is no different.  There's nothing, including our thought, that sits above or outside the world and has no impact on it.  The difference between true knowledge and error then lies not in its representational accuracy, but in whether the relation it creates or expresses is stable or merely metastable and subject to change as circumstances change.  As Kuhn demonstrated long ago, our knowledge can undergo paradigm shifts that look just like phase transitions.  But this doesn't 'disprove' or 'invalidate' the old knowledge any more than the transition to a new allotrope 'disproves' the prior crystal structure.  What's happened is simply that a previously stable equilibrium has become unstable due to some change in social, psychological, or physical conditions, ie. some change in the energetic and singular conditions that individuate knowledge. 

1.2.2.2 Individuation as the Genesis of Crystalline Forms Starting from an Amorphous Mass

Let me recapitulate the trajectory of the argument to set up Simondon's final step in this chapter.  The question is how to make an individual.  Chapter 1 showed us that you cannot make an individual from abstract matter and form, but that these two have to be brought together as such by some system that encompasses both.  Chapter 2 begins by examining what Simondon has started to call the "hylomorphic situation" in which an asymmetric non-equilibrium system contains potential energy.  This is the first positive requirement for individuation -- the existence of a potential energy of structural transformation.  These energetic conditions alone are not sufficient however.  The particular type of sulfur crystal which precipitates depends on the presence of a particular historical singularity in the form of a seed of one type or another.  This is the second positive requirement for individual -- the presence of a singularity that crystallizes the system by transforming potential energy into actual structure.  However, it turns out that these two conditions are not the complete story of individuation.  The third positive requirement for individuation is that the singularity present be capable of catalyzing this particular system's transformation.  In other words, there has to be some sort of match or fit or resonance between the singularity and the energetic conditions.  They have to belong to one another.

This third condition might seem kinda obvious given the examples Simondon has used so far.  Of course supercooled sulfur will form a prismatic sulfur crystal in the presence of a prismatic sulfur seed.  But where did this initial seed come from?  What triggers the first step where we just begin to pass from amorphous mass to crystalline solid?  There has to be some sort of singularity that is expressly not a tiny crystal.  In fact, this singularity may have nothing to do with sulfur at all.  Consider again the instructions for supercooling water.  The flask has to be cleaned with acid and free of scratches because all kinds of impurity can serve as seeds for ice formation.  All kinds, but of course, not any kind of impurity or asymmetry (for example, we can use a cylinder, not a sphere for the experiment, despite the former's lower degree of symmetry).  The particular singularity has to correspond to the particular energetic system in question.  This is why Simondon again takes up the examination of crystals, and specifically considers how we move from the pre-individual amorphous state to a state where there is an individual crystal seed.

What he uncovers is a fairly subtle point that is easy to overlook on the first reading.  Because the real question is not so much how the seed itself forms as how some symmetry breaking cascades into further symmetry breaking.  We said that all kinds of things can serve as seeds; there are always asymmetries in a system if we go looking for them.  But we never know whether these asymmetries will serve as singularities by looking at them in-themselves.  We can only discover in retrospect, as it were, that this asymmetry constituted a singularity for this system.  We only find out that this was the initial crystal seed by watching how it amplifies itself, by how it propagates itself or spreads through the milieu.  The singularity 'in-itself' is truly a sort of nothing.  But under the right conditions, that singularity can constitute a crystal seed whose advancing front is defined by a series of points that each serve as the same type of singularity with respect to the uncrystallized medium.  The crystal propagates at its edge, or better yet, the crystal as an individual simply is this mobile edge that serves as interface between two different states of the system.  So the individual isn't really a spatial phenomenon contained in the initial seed which just happens to grow larger.  It would be more appropriate to say that is the the act of growth itself, or the capacity of the system to crystallize under certain energetic and singular conditions.  In other words, the individual is resonance, relation, not substance. 

Thus, a third condition is manifested that we have not been able to note in the preceding case because it was necessarily fulfilled, since the structural germ and the metastable substance were of the same chemical nature. Here it is no longer a question of the scalar quantity of potential energy nor of the pure vectoral properties of the structure carried by the germ, but a ques- tion of a third type of rapport (which can be called analogical) between the latent structures of the still amorphous substance and the germ's actual structure. This condition is required for there to be a veritable amplifying relation between this structure of the germ and this potential energy carried by an amorphous substance. (I, 81)

This relation is information.  It's what allows a tiny crystal seed to grow into a macroscopic crystal.  The energy for this transformation doesn't come from the internal power of the seed, but from the way that its tiny energy resonates with the larger energy initially external to it, thus amplifying the source.  It's the same type of energy my words have when they cause you to fetch me a beer.  I'm not driving the car, handling the money, and getting the beer all with my own energy.  I'm using the tiny energy of my speaking to exploit yours.  And just like the definition of information as surprisal, the individual relation begins with an act of symmetry breaking, or what Simondon calls polarization.  The individual properly speaking is the ability of this symmetry breaking polarization to propagate, that is, for an initial difference to make a difference, at Bateson put it.

... the properties of a crystalline individual express and actualize the polarity or bundle of polarities that have presided over its genesis by pro- longing this polarity. A crystal, which is a structured matter, can become a structuring being; it is both the consequence and the cause of this polarization of matter, without which it would not exist. (I, 84)

I think this idea of resonance really helps us understand Simondon's conception of the individual as process or relation in a deeper way.  The individual crystal is not in the seed nor the amorphous milieu. It doesn't have defined physical 'properties' of 'characteristics'.  It is nothing but its ability to transform one set of substantial properties into another set, a transformation that always happens at the limit of these two phases. And this ability is the same thing as a potential amplification of an initial singularity.

The genetic properties of a crystal are prominently manifested on its surface; these are the limit's properties. Thus, if we want to be rigorous we cannot say the "properties of the crystal"; they are instead modalities of the relation between the crystal and the amorphous body. It is because the crystal is perpetually unfinished, in a maintained state of suspended genesis, that it possesses what can be uniquely called "properties"; these properties are in fact the ongoing disequilibrium manifested by the relations with the polarized fields or by the creation (at the limit of the crystal and around it) of a field that has a polarity determined by the crystal's structure. (I, 84)

At this point, as I alluded to earlier, Simondon makes his way back to the issue of time.  Time is the perfect model of symmetry breaking.  For this reason, we might say that the real limit that defines the crystal is the present.  The present is where the structured past has a chance to crystallize the amorphous future. In this sense the individual is where being undergoes a phase change, where the actual crystallizes from the potential in a becoming, "... becoming is not opposed to being; it is the constitutive relation of being qua individual" (I, 85).  But this means that the individual is neither potential nor actual, neither possible form nor actual matter, but exists only at the moment of transition, and in the way this moment, because of the resonance it creates, gives rise to different moments that are nevertheless the same, in a process of amplification.  Thus the real individual doesn't lie in the hunk of structured sulfur that results from a process of crystallization, but is instead the whole family of moments where a point on the edge of the crystal served as seed for the amorphous milieu surrounding it.  The macroscopic crystal is not so much the statistical average of these real individual moments as a depiction of their family tree.

It can certainly be said in a derivative sense that a certain amount of sulfur is individualized by the fact that it is presented in a determined allotropic form. But this determined state of the overall ensemble does nothing but express on the macroscopic level the underlying and most fundamental reality of existence in the mass of real individuals that have a community of origin. The individualized characteristic of the ensemble is merely the statistical expression of the existence of a certain number of real individuals. If an ensemble envelops many physical individuals from various origins and different structures, it is a mixture and remains poorly individualized. The veritable support of physical individuality is effectively the operation of elementary individuation, even if it only appears indirectly at the level of observation. (I, 85)

1.2.2.3 Epistemological Consequences: Reality of Relation and the Notion of Substance

Simdondon concludes this chapter with some reflections on the difference between the crystalline and the hylomorphic schemas of individualization.  The most obvious one is that their definitions of the individual don't share the same understanding of interiority and exteriority.  The substantial individual we associate with the hylomorphic model has a clear spatial inside and outside. It is a finite being whose limit separates self from not-self.  By contrast, for the crystalline schema, the individual exists only in its constantly displaced limit, which is no longer what separates it from all other things, but what produces it as a connection or transition between system states. 

The finite being is the exact contrary of the limited being, for the finite being is self-limiting, since it does not possess a sufficient quantity of being to grow endlessly; on the contrary, in this indefinite being that the individual is, the dynamism of growing does not stop, since the successive stages of growing are like a number of relays due to which increasingly large quantities of potential energy are captured in order to organize and incorporate increasingly considerable amounts of amorphous matter. (I, 88)

Though it sounds odd to put it this way, because the crystalline individual is a being of the limit, it is by rights unlimited, infinite.  The amplifying process of individuation gets as big as it can get, and the individual it produces thus has no inherent largest limit.  In a sense, since the essence of the crystal is the feedback process by which the seed resonates with and converts the amorphous milieu into more crystal, the individual is eternal and self-producing.  These words are easy to misinterpret though, so Simondon simply points out that the spatial growth of the crystal is always indefinite.  And he gives a couple of interesting examples of how this same logic applies to the crystal shrinking through something like corrosion.  Both the arising and the ceasing of the individual occur at the limit, in the eternal present.

So the crystal has no largest scale.  But does it have a smallest scale?  Indeed it does.  Since it is produced by a transformation of an amorphous milieu into a regular lattice, the crystallization can only happen according to the spacing of the lattice.  Or as Simondon puts it, the crystal milieu is periodic.  The macroscopic edge of the crystal can be indefinitely large, but if we look carefully, this edge is composed of many microscopically ordered sites of crystallization with predictable gaps between them.  Even though it can multiply itself through the crystal's growth, the smallest limit of the crystal can't be just anywhere.  In fact though, this regular microscopic limit of the crystal is part of what allows it to grow into an indefinitely large macroscopic crystal that remains self-similar.  The momentary sites of growth that are properly speaking the 'limited being' of the crystal are spaced periodically, which is what allows the macroscopic crystal to grow as large as it can without changing structure.

In fact, the shared source of the limit and the structuration is the milieu's periodicity. Here, with a more rational content, we rediscover the already indicated notion of the indefinite possibility of growth; the crystal can grow while conserving all its characteristics because it possesses a periodic structure; the growth is therefore always identical to itself; a crystal has no center that allows us to measure the distance of one point of its exterior contour with respect to its center; relative to the crystal's structure, its limit is no more distant from the center than the other points; the crystal's limit is in virtually every point, and it can really appear in each point through a cleavage. The words interiority and exteriority cannot be applied with their usual meaning to this reality that the crystal is. (I, 91)

The crystal as a structure isn't possible without the discontinuity of the periodic lattice at the microscopic level.  If the molecular level were purely isotropic, with no polarization or symmetry breaking, and every point were equivalent to every other, the molar crystal could not form.  In this sense, the individual always requires some small scale discontinuity or singularity.  However, it also requires the energetic milieu that surrounds this discontinuity, and which it bathes in as a continuous potential energy that this singularity can draw from in crystallizing a structure.  So we return to a point Simondon made in his introduction.  The individual is an intermediate level of reality that links two disparate scales, two orders of magnitude. It's a relation that can create a substantial system with multiple parts.  

This supposes that individuation exists on an intermediate level between the order of magnitude of the particulate elements and that of the molar ensemble of the complete system; on this intermediate level, individuation is an operation of amplifying structuration that makes the active properties of initially microphysical discontinuity pass to the macrophysical level; individuation is initiated on the level at which the discontinuous of the singular molecule is capable (in a milieu in a "hylomorphic situation" of metastability) of modulating an energy whose support is already a part of the continuum in the population of randomly arranged molecules, i.e. in a superior order of magnitude relative to the molar system. (I, 94)

The Two Aspects of Individuation

1.1.3.1  Reality and Relativity of the Foundation of Individuation

The final section of this first chapter on "Form and Matter" takes us back a step to the roots of the problem that the hylomorphic model purports to solve.  Thus it advances some of the themes we saw in the introduction, though it reads a bit like a still compressed version of specific details I presume will be further elaborated as we go.  Nevertheless, I'll venture a preliminary unpacking of these ideas, even though we may be forced to modify some of this interpretation later on.

We started with a fairly simple question: how do individuals come to be?  We've seen that both atomism and hylomorphism beg the question because they place the principle of individuation before or outside the individual.  With hylomorphism in particular, we've examined in detail how the schema sees the final product of a process of individuation in which matter meets form as somehow already contained in embryo in one or another of the two terms.  The substance of the distinct individual is either in the different matter that waits to get stamped by a single form, or it's in the different forms crafted from a plastic matter.  In either case, that principle that makes the individual exactly what it is, different from all other individuals, actually preexists the process of production of the individual.  It rests, in principle fully formed, in the volume of matter or the head of the craftsman.  The process of individuation just translates this principle that represents a possible individual into an actual individual.  Clearly then, it doesn't answer the question of how the first individual comes to be. 

In fact, if we stop to think about it, the hylomorphic model takes the individual for granted in an even deeper respect than the one we've just articulated.  Because where does it get this notion of a possible individual, an imagined individual in embryo?  Simondon has already suggested that the problem lies in the way it subjectively views the production of a specific empirical individual.  It takes the fully constituted individual that is the end product of some production technique as the term whose existence needs to be explained, and then it offers an explanation of that term's distinctness based on a particular explainer's role in its production.  Thus the master who owns property and issues production orders discovers the distinctness of each log in which of his particular trees it was milled from.  Likewise, the craftsman discovers the distinctness of this log, right here, in his own labor which shaped it just so and not otherwise.  Both of them take the empirical log in front of them for granted as a isolated, stable and self-identical individual, distinct from all the other logs.  And then they look for a principle that produces this exactly this distinctness, only to rediscover their own distinctness as human individuals.  In other words, they elevate one aspect of the empirical individual into a sort of transcendental principle of its production.

Which leads us to the question: are there actually any individuals at all?  We've assumed that it's the empirical log which requires explanation.  But how did we decide that was an individual?  In a sense, we've just projected our own human individuality onto it as its intrinsic reality.  This is Simondon's point in the first paragraph of this section, one which was removed from later editions but is still worth reading.

The individuation of objects is not entirely independent from the existence of man; the individuated object is an individuated object for man: in man there is a need to individuate objects, which is one of the aspects of the need to recognize oneself and to rediscover oneself in things, and also to rediscover oneself therein as a being who has a definite identity that is stabilized by a role and an activity. (I, 47)

 

While the paragraph only scratches the surface of the problem, it goes on to raise some interesting follow-up questions.  We explain the log's individuality through our own subjective individuality as master or worker.  But this merely displaces the individual that requires explanation -- after all, how do I know that I am an individual?  While we usually take our own subjective individuality so for granted that it can serve as a convincing anchor for our explanation of the individuality of objects, SImondon is suggesting that this tendency actually reflects the fact that our self is not as certain or stable as we imagine.  One, "need[s] to recognize oneself and to rediscover oneself in things".  In other words, we individuate things in order to further individuate ourselves.  We're not projecting a fixed sense of self onto a fixed object.  We're creating self and world through a process of feedback.  At bottom, Simondon is really seeking to understand this process of creation of conjoined individuals.  This process can't be one of arbitrary "projection" because this metaphor requires the individuality of both projector and screen, as well as some explanation of how an individual image could be transferred from one to the other. 

Are there any individuals at all then?  Lurking under the question of how an individual comes to be is the deeper one: what is an individual?  While Simondon has not offered us a definition yet, we seem to keep coming back to two components of individuality.  One the one hand, the individual is what it is, an entity in itself and identical to itself.  On the other hand, the entity is distinct from all other things.  But do these two ways of defining an individual always converge?  We take "I am what I am = I am not what I am not" for granted as an axiom.  But when you think about it, this is a very peculiar assumption.

To confuse these two aspects is to suppose that an individual is what it is (at the interior of itself, in itself, relative to itself) because it involves a definite relation with other individuals and not with another specific individual, but with all other individuals. In the first sense, individuation is a set of intrinsic characteristics; in the second sense, individuation is a set of extrinsic characteristics, i.e. relations. But how can these two series of characteristics accommodate one another? (I, 48)

How can what is proper to an individual be bound to what this individual would be if it did not possess what it possesses on its own? (I,48)

How can what makes me me be the same thing that makes you, and everyone and everything else, not me?  Is individuation something positive and productive, referring to an inside, or merely something negative and differentiating, that refers to an outside?  It's far from obvious that these two perspectives should have anything to do with one another, much less axiomatically coincide.  Unless, of course, they both stem from a deeper principle that ensures their compatibility.  But we seem to only have principles of individuation which preexist the individual, and which, as we've seen are ultimately just disguised versions of this or some other individual.  How can we think of the coming into being of an individual (ie. individuation) without taking the starting point or outcome of this process for granted?  And how can we do that in such a way that it produces an individual whose intrinsic being-for-itself always matches its extrinsic being-for-others?

Clearly, this is the problem Simondon's theory of the pre-individual was supposed to address.  It's puzzling then that this section doesn't mention the pre-individual at all, but instead talks about the "individuating system".  As his critique of hylomorphism's "dark zone" pointed out, an individual only comes to be because it is part of an entire energetic system that connects form to matter.  In a sense, it's not clear how to even distinguish the individual from the system as a whole.  The individual is a singularity within the system that allows for what we think of as a particular empirical individual to take shape.  But this singularity has no meaning outside of the system to which it belongs.  At the same time, a system with no singularities would not be an individuating system, because nothing would ever take shape within it.  As a result, individuating system and individual seem to be two sides of the same coin which correspond to the center and periphery that we saw went missing in the hylomorphic schema.  Individuation is then the process by which a singularity triggers some system of potential energy to move to a new equilibrium.  The actualization of this energy leaves behind a form that we usually call an individual object like the brick we discussed. 

In this case, the principle of individuation is the state of the individuating system, this state of allagmatic relation within an energetic complex that includes all the singularities; the veritable individual exists for a mere instant during the technical operation: it lasts as long as the form-taking. After this operation, what remains is a result that will begin to degrade, and not a veritable individual; this is an individuated being rather than a real individual, i.e. an individuating individual, an individual undergoing individuation (I, 49)

While I think I understand the direction Simondon would like to go, I'm having difficulty fully articulating how his energetic model of individuation responds to the conditions of the problem he identified in critiquing hylomorphism.  Basically, he wants to rethink the individual as a process, not a product.  The process of course has a product, but if the appearance of the product marks the end of the process, that is, if the equilibrium reached by the individuating system is stable, then it actually ceases to be an individuating system.  It's as if all the potential energy of the system is discharged, in which case it sort of ceases to be a system at all and is instead converted into a mere static object.  And it seems that Simondon doesn't see any static object, any "individuated being" as a true individual because it lacks a mechanism to maintain, or perhaps more importantly to continue transforming, its individuality.  If we explain the individual as the end point of a process that produces only and exactly this individual, and then halts, we have fallen into exactly the trap we outlined earlier -- we have made the principle of individuation preexist the individual and yet be tailor made for it alone.  Effectively we have simply redoubled the empirical individual before us.  The alternative is to see the individual product not as the endpoint of the system, but as its means of continuation.  The individual then is better thought of as the process by which the individuating system continues to produce individuals, which are its way of continuing to produce individuals ... The true individual is a feedback loop that opens up new possibilities.

This is a pretty complicated idea that I'm sure we'll cover again in greater detail.  I think the connection Simondon is trying to make here is just that the problem of not taking the individual for granted requires a strange solution like the one he proposes.  The principle of individuation cannot preexist the individual, and so in some sense it must be the individual.  Which borders on saying that the individual is the cause of itself. 

The veritable individual is one that conserves its system of individuation with it, thereby amplifying singularities. The principle of individuation is in this energetic system of internal resonance; form is only the individual's form if it is form for the individual, i.e. if it is suitable for the singularity of this constituting system; matter is the individual's matter only if it is matter for the individual, i.e. if it is implicated in this system, if it enters into this system as the vehicle of energy and is distributed in accordance with the distribution of energy. (I, 49)

Thinking of the individual as a process, as the means by which the system continues the process of individuation, clearly starts to blur the line between individual and system.  In a sort of fractal recursion, the individual has become an individuating system in its own right.  As a result the idea of the individual as a process also does away with the separation between the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of an individual.  So we discover that energetic individuation is precisely the deeper process we needed to explain the mystery of why I am me and you are simultaneously not me.  The individual doesn't really have a separate inside and outside.  There's just a system, and a singularity (which allows this system to continue producing new singularities).  Or what Simondon will call the individual and its associated milieu.  

But the energetic system in which an individual is constituted is neither more intrinsic nor extrinsic to this individual: it is associated with this individual, it is this individual's associated milieu. Through its energetic conditions of existence, the individual does not merely exist within its own limits; it emerges from a singularity. (I, 49)

Indeed, in the next section we'll see how the individual and its associated milieu are dual concepts that can't be thought of without one another.  We'll also look in more detail at whether there is a difference between an "associated milieu" and an "individuating system".  For now though, Simondon is content to point out how his energetic schema for individuation completely changes the notion of what it means to be an individual.  When the individual becomes process and activity, the very being of the individual becomes the relationship it creates between the pieces of an energetic system.  In other words, the subtle point here is that the system doesn't preexist the individual, but is actually brought into being by the individual; the individual as singularity is what allows the system to become an individuating system.  It's as if the system can't be fit together as such without this missing piece (recall unhinged time).  But of course, there is no 'naked' singularity, defined without consideration for the system it is part of.  So, again, we find a circularity -- the system is what it is because of the singularity, and the singularity is what it is because of the system. 

For the individual, relation has the value of being; the extrinsic cannot be distinguished from the intrinsic; what is truly and essentially the individual is the active relation, the exchange between the extrinsic and the intrinsic; there is extrinsic and intrinsic relative to what is first. What is first is this system of internal singular resonance, this system of the allagmatic relation between two orders of magnitude. (I, 50)

To want to characterize the individual in itself or relative to other realities is to turn it into a relational term, i.e. into a relation with itself or a relation with another reality; first, one must find the point of view from which the individual can be grasped as an activity of relation, not as a term of this relation; properly speaking, the individual is in relation neither with itself nor with other realities; it is the being of relation and not a being in relation, for relation is an intense operation, an active center. (I, 50)

Naturally, thinking of the individual as relationship is pretty difficult for us.  It recapitulates the basic problem of Difference & Repetition, namely, how can we conceive of difference in itself, rather than as something that merely compares two identities.  In Simondon's case, we clearly can't define the individual as a relationship between other fully constituted individuals without begging the question of how an individual comes to be.  But as soon as we replace every 'term' with a 'relationship between terms', we end up with the complicated fractal recursion that always seems to accompany any philosophy of immanence. 

1.1.3.2  The Energetic Foundation of Individuation: Individuation and Milieu

This final section of chapter 1 sums up Simondon's critique of hylomorphism and returns us to the non-dual vision we glimpsed in the introduction.  The problem with hylomorphism is that it takes the individual for granted, assuming it exists in embryo on the side of either matter or form, and fails to examine the process of its production.  However, in the course of examining the blind spots of the hylomorphic schema -- its inability to address both the entire energetic system as well as the singularity that crystalizes a particular individual -- we've discovered that it not only fails to account for the production of the individual, but it fundamentally misconceives the very 'being' needs to be explained.  It presumes that this being is a static, inert, fully differentiated and self-identical thing, like a substance or what Aristotle called a "concrete whole" (the súnolon is σύν+ολος = together + everything).  In short, it presumes that all individuals are like bricks.

According to this path of research, the constituted individual wouldn't be able to seem like an entirely detached, absolute being in conformity with the model of substance, like the pure σύνολον [súnolon]. Individuation would be nothing but one of the possible becomings of a system and would be able, moreover, to exist on several levels and more or less completely; the individual as a definite, isolated, consistent being would be merely one of the two parts of the complete reality; instead of the σύνολον [súnolon], it would be the result of a certain organizational event occurring within the σύνολον and dividing the latter into two complementary realities: the individual and the associated milieu after individuation; the associated milieu is the complement of the individual relative to the original whole. (I, 51)

So, instead of taking the individual product for granted, Simondon will begin with the energetic process.  The concrete individual produced by this process its not its endpoint, but a sort of event that crystalizes a form.  This isn't the final form of the process, or its only possible form.  It's simply one of the transformations that can happen in this energetic system, in particular, its a form-producing transformation that separates the system into two sides.  In this way the concrete individual form is truly explained as a byproduct (as it were) of a process which does not presuppose it.  

But how should we talk about the being of an event, about the reality of a transformation, a phase transition that produces the conjoined pair of individual/associated milieu or singularity/system?  Apparently, this is how Plato used the term "symbol".

The individual cannot account for itself on the basis of itself, because it is not the being's whole to the extent that it is the expression of a resolution. It is simply the complementary symbol of another real, i.e. the associated milieu (here, as in Plato, the word symbol is taken in the original sense relating to the usage of relations of hospitality: a stone broken into two halves produces a pair of symbols; each fragment, conserved by the descendants of those who have bound together relations of hospitality, can be brought together with its complementary piece in a way so as to reconstitute the initial unity of the broken stone (I, 52)

I've never heard this etymology of symbol before, but it's very interesting.  The symbol is what is thrown together (σύν + βάλλω = together + throw).  That is, it's not everything together, but a particular system held together by a particular singularity.  In a sense, the concrete individual produced by a process of individuation is just as arbitrary as a symbol.  It is merely one token that indicates two correlated realities in the same way that a word indicates a correlation between concept and object.  This is why Simondon says that we will conceive the individual as a "splitting" (I, 51) of an energetic system, that nevertheless represents a "conservation of being" for this system.  The thing that splits the system is the same thing that holds it together.  So, in what seems a clear statement of non-duality, he describes how being is neither produced nor consumed in this process, but is only transformed. 

Furthermore, the separation initiated by the individuation within the system cannot lead to the individual's isolation; individuation, then, is the structuration of a system without a separation of the individual and its complementary, such that individuation introduces a new regime of the system but does not break the system ...The principle of the method that we are proposing consists in supposing that there is a conservation of being and that thinking cannot occur except starting from a complete reality. (I, 53)

Physical Signification of Technical Form-Taking

1.1.2.1 Physical Conditions of Technical Form-Taking 

At the end of the previous section, Simondon pointed out that a necessary explanation for the powerful historical influence of the hylomorphic model is its resonance with a particular type of hierarchical social system.  There have been various versions of this social structure over time, but all of them share the division of society into those who give orders and those who carry them out.  The idea that individuals are created by bringing together two separate components called matter and form mirrors this social division. However, whether we think of this hierarchical social system as composed of masters and slaves, or landowners and artisans, or capital and labor, Simondon doesn't think that society alone is a sufficient explanation for the dominance of hylomorphism.  So, in what feels like a bit of a Kantian move to examine the conditions of possibility of this schema, the beginning of this section investigates what matter itself needs to be like for it to be in-form-able.  After that, Simondon returns to deal with the parallel question of the conditions of possibility of form, which as we saw runs through a particular social system.  Form requires information, which in the case of technical production depends on human intention.

Form-taking itself requires matter, form and energy, and singularity. But, for a raw matter and a pure form to be able to divide two technical half-chains that will be rejoined by the grasping of singular information, it is necessary that raw matter already contain, before any elaboration, something that can forge a system leading to the terminal point of the half-chain whose origin is pure form. This condition must be sought in the natural world before any sort of human elaboration. Matter must be structured in a certain way for it to already have the properties that are the condition of form-taking. (I, 37)

For matter to be available for the hylomorphic schema, it has to already contain implicit forms.  Matter cannot be a completely 'raw' non-thing, utterly without form, if form is to be able to attach to it, so to speak.  Or, to put it the other way around, even 'raw' matter already contains a formal structure.  As we saw with the brick, the process of imparting form requires a certain type of matter, and does not stamp or mold a form from outside so much as coax out and integrate forms that are already possible, already implicit, in the matter.  In the case of the clay, it may appear as if we actively put these implicit forms into the matter by preparing the homogeneity that would enable us to effectively mold it into any form we want.  But, by employing the example of woodworking this time, Simondon aims to demonstrate that this type of homogeneity is something we can only put into the matter by taking out all the implicit forms that the 'raw' matter began with.  Even a 'formless' matter has an implicit form as its condition of possibility -- in this case the possibility that almost all of the implicit forms can be removed from this matter in order to homogenize it.  In the end, "form-taking" is not so much form-creation or form-imposition as a process of prolonging and transforming the forms already implicit in matter.  Matter never begins as homogeneous, but as filled with all sorts of formal heterogeneities; plastic matter is created through a process of selection and subtraction.   

Simondon identifies three levels of implicit form involved in a raw matter such as wood.  First, since the raw matter comes from nature, it isn't raw at all, but structured in all kinds of natural ways.  To state the obvious fact that we often leave out of our technical worldview: we get wood from trees.  Not all trees are identical.  Different individual trees are suitable for different purposes because of their shape, their type of wood, their size, etc ... The wood matter is already formed in a completely objective way independently of the technical use we make of it.  In fact, this use is constrained by the form of the tree -- you can't make a six foot wide beam out of a four foot wide tree.  

Second, the wood matter is individuated not just at the level of the whole tree, but at the level of the fibers that compose the tree internally.  Wood has a grain.  Its fibers form a pattern that dictates whether it will make a strong or weak material.  These formal patterns are a kind of information contained in the matter, information we can 'read' by approaching it with different tools.  Simondon contrasts the working of wood with a wedge and with a lathe.  Splitting wood with a wedge or working it with a drawknife follows the grain of the wood, and even respects its knots, drawing out and using the forms implicit in it.  But using these tools requires a feedback loop between the information implicit in the wood and the intention of the woodworker who incorporates this information into his overall design.

What makes certain simple tools simpler, like the drawknife, which does ex- cellent work, is that, due to their non-automaticity and the non-geometrical character of their movement, which is entirely supported by the hand and not by an external system of reference (like the lathe), these tools allow for us to grasp continuous and precise signals that invite us to follow the implicit forms of workable matter. (I, 38)

By contrast, because working wood with the lathe ignores the form of the wood, it only works well with wood that doesn't have a strong grain structure, and so more closely approximates a homogeneous matter.  The lathe may undoubtedly enable us to impose a greater variety of explicit forms on the wood than the drawknife, but this is only at the cost of losing the advantages provided by the wood's implicit form -- for example, wood without a grain or where the grain has been ignored is weaker and less flexible.  

Third, 'raw' wood matter is also already formed at a level even smaller than grain.  Wood is cellular.  As Simondon points out, the implicit cellular form provides an absolute limit to the explicit forms wood can be take on.  We cannot, to follow his somewhat odd example, make a wood filter  that would catch things smaller than the size of the wood cells.  Wood matter has a smallest characteristic scale on which is the already formed, and anything we would like to do with it must be built above this scale.

... the only forms that can be imposed by the technical operation are those of an order of magnitude superior to the elementary im- plicit forms of the matter utilized.13 The discontinuity of matter intervenes as form, and what happens at the level of the element happens at the level of the haecceity of the ensembles ... (I, 39)

 

Thus, matter is already implicitly formed at the level of the natural ensemble from which it is taken, at the level of the elements that compose it, and at the level of an individual piece being used by the woodworker.  It's no surprise to find that these are the three levels of technical objects in Simondon's scheme.

As the name suggests, none of these implicit forms are given to matter by human use.  Technical production merely avails itself of these objective forms already present in the matter.  In fact, without these forms, there couldn't be any "matter" for technology to operate on.  Here, Simondon coincides entirely with Arthur's observation that technology always harnesses an objective natural phenomenon.  In short, the world has to be structured before we can structure it.  


1.1.2.2 Qualities and Implicit Physical Form

A skeptic might wonder if Simondon is merely belaboring the obvious.  Of course matter has to have certain qualities if we are to use it in particular technical operations.  Try making a marshmallow house or a steel mattress.  The question, though, is where those qualities come from.  We can only make matter with specific qualities we desire because the matter already has implicit forms which lend themselves to these qualifications.  In other words, there is no "un-qualified" matter.  Simondon observes that what we usually refer to as the "qualities" of some material are in fact the statistics of its implicit forms.  Wood is strong along a certain axis because the implicit forms of its fibers tend to line up in that direction.

Quite a few qualities—particularly those relative to superficial states, like smoothness, granulation, polish, coarseness, and softness—designate statistically predictable implicit forms: this qualification is merely a global evaluation linked to the magnitude of a certain implicit form generally presented by a certain matter.  (I,41)


 

Here again, we see the concept of a distinction in scale or order of magnitude that Simondon has mentioned multiple times.  Quality is like the macroscopic average of a microscopic implicit form variable.  Thus quality only exists relative to a particular technical operation at a particular scale.  We are the ones who attribute a particular quality to matter, based on what we'd like to do with it at a given time.  We take an average of the implicit forms that are relevant to the level we're interested in.  As we've seen though, these forms exist objectively on every level of matter.  This may mean we can discuss the quality of matter at a variety of scales, but also shows us that the scale of quality is always an order of magnitude higher than the scale of implicit form. 

It can thus be asserted that the technical operation reveals and utilizes already existing material forms and moreover constitutes them from other forms on a scale larger than implicit natural forms work upon; the technical operation integrates implicit forms rather than imposing a totally new and foreign form on a matter that would remain passive vis-à-vis this form; technical form-taking is not an absolute genesis of haecceity; the haecceity of the technical object is preceded and supported by several layers of natural haecceity that it systematizes, reveals, and clarifies and that comodulate the operation of form-taking (I, 41)

 

Once we drop the notion of a hylomorphic matter qualified only by its pure plasticity, the actual history of material technology makes a lot more sense.  We began by exploiting a matter that contained a tremendous wealth of implicit forms readily available at the scale of an individual human -- forms specific to the organic individuals that surrounded us.  It's only a long process of technical development that enables us to produce the matter that the hylomorphic schema takes as its starting point, a matter whose natural origin has been erased. 

This is why it can be supposed that the first types of matter elaborated by humans were not absolutely raw matter but matter already structured on the scale of human tools and human hands: plant and animal products, already structured and specialized by their vital functions— like skin, bone, bark, the supple wood of the branch, and flexible vines—were certainly used rather than absolutely raw matter; these seemingly first matters are the vestiges of a living haecceity, and this is why they are already present themselves to the technical operation as elaborated, and whereby all that remains for the operation is to accommodate them. (I, 42)

1.1.2.3 Hylomorphic Ambivalence

The hylomorphic schema depends on the implicit formability of matter.  But it also depends on the 'matterability' of form.  If human technical intention could not take on material form, it could never interact with matter.  You can't literally fix radios by thinking; at some point you actually have to manipulate something in the physical world.  The materializeability of thought, its ability to have any real effect on the world, is another unstated assumption of the hylomorphic schema, one we've seen runs through a prior (or at least reciprocal) organic and social individuation of the thinker.  But while both of these are conditions of possibility for hylomorphism, the schema only gains explanatory traction for us because it reflects the lived perspectives of human subjects.  Matter must be formed; form must 'matter'; but we must also be able to see the essence of an individual only in the meeting of matter and form.  

Simondon situates this final requirement in the characteristics of the particular social systems that have embraced the hylomorphic model.  Basically, these are systems that maintain a separation between the one who thinks and the one who works.  Such systems then allow for two distinct perspectives on the creation of an individual.  

On the one hand, we can adopt the perspective of the pure thinker, the master or capitalist, who does no direct work.  We might call this the idealist perspective.  The master does not work, but instead simply gives orders.  But, from their perspective, they simply reiterate the same order each time they would like a particular class of individual to be created.  Make me a brick, or a log, or another dollar dollar bill.   Since the order is always identical, it's only the particular bit of matter used in constructing each of these that would differentiate the resulting individual objects that are produced.  To the master, except for the plurality of their instantiation, they're all the same brick.

... form, which is merely a fabricating intention, a voluntary arrangement, can neither age nor become; it is always the same, from one fabrication to another; it is at least the same qua intention for the consciousness of the one who thinks and gives the order of fabrication; it is the same abstractly for the one who controls the fabrication of a thousand bricks: he wants them all to be identical, of the same dimension, and according to the same geometrical figure. Whence results the fact that, when the one who thinks is not the one who works, there is in reality nothing in his thought except a single form for all the objects of the same collection: the form is generic not logically or physically but socially: a single order is given for all the bricks of the same type; this order consequently cannot differentiate the bricks effectively molded after fabrication into distinct individuals. (I, 43)

 

So, perhaps paradoxically, the idealist master situates the principle of individuation in matter, even if this matter is conceived as a purely inert plastic volume capable of taking on shape and producing a quantity of distinct individuals.  Here, however, Simondon adds an interesting observation about how the master's perspective on the pure interchangeability of matter remains incomplete and "subjective" (bottom of 44).  Because all orders to make a brick are not created equal, nor does the master distinguish the final bricks only by the particular volume of inert matter that composes them.  After all, there are my bricks and your bricks.  Orders are not quite universal Platonic forms because they remained attached in some sense to the subject who gave them.  And the resulting individual objects these orders produce inherit some of this attachment, as if the distinct substance of the ordering subject could somehow be transferred into the ordered objects.  Simondon observes this effect in the landowner who grows trees for market.

The man who gives the matter to be elaborated places value on what he knows, what is attached to him, what he has surveyed and seen grow; for him, the initial concrete is the matter insofar as it is his, belongs to him, and this matter must be extended into objects; due to its quantity, this matter is a principle of the number of objects that will result from form-taking. This tree will become this or that plank; all the trees taken individually one-by-one will become this heap of planks; there is a passage from the haecceity of the trees to the haecceity of the planks. What this passage expresses is the permanence of what the subject recognizes of himself in the objects; the expression of the self here is the concrete relation of property, the bond of belonging  (I, 45)

 

[The sentence before this one contains an interesting aside.

Only a commercially abstract thought could fail to attach a price to the haecceity of the matter and fail to seek a principle of individuation in it. (I, 45)

It's of course possible to break down this subjective perspective of ownership, or at least increase its abstraction and distance it from the material world.  This is precisely the process by which ownership of material property becomes converted into capital through a "commercially abstract thought".  Eventually in fact, the only matter is capital, and the only distinction between units of matter is their belonging to a particular human subject.  All the dollars in the world are identical -- except you can't have any of mine.  This represents the extreme form of the hylomorphic model where matter has become completely abstract, homoegeneous, fluid, and plastic, and form has likewise been reduced to its barest abstract essence, becoming nothing but the pure possession of citizen 27b-6.  Since Simondon's comments come in the context of reflecting on the psychology of a landowner who produces timber for market, they made me think again of Cronon's detailed history of the origins of the Chicago commodity markets in Nature's Metropolis.   It takes a lot of preparation to produce a 'raw' commodity completely divorced from its origin.]

On the other hand, we can adopt the perspective of the worker who carries out the order, for whom thinking and working are conjoined.  We might call this the materialist perspective.  For them, the master's proprietary matter is nothing but raw material, or at best matter prepared to be homogeneous in the relevant respects.  When I'm actually making bricks, it doesn't much matter to whom the clay belonged.  Nor do I see one brick as different from another because of the distinct volumes of matter used to make them.  The bricks are different because I made them at different times, in different ways, perhaps overstuffing some molds, or not letting others dry properly. 

... each molding is directed by a set of particular psychical, perceptive, and somatic events; the veritable form (the one that directs the arrangement of the mold), the paste, and the regime of successive gestures change from one copy to the other like so many possible variations on the same theme; fatigue as well as the overall state of perception and of representation intervene in this particular operation, which is equivalent to a singular existence of a particular form for each act of fabrication, thereby translating into the reality of the object; the singularity, the principle of individuation, would then be in the information (I, 44)

 

So, again a bit paradoxically, the materialist sees the principle of individuation in the art used to form each brick, and in the distinct information imparted to each by the precise way the worker constructs them.  And, again, this perspective is not not completely consistent but contains a "subjective" element insofar as the artist identifies their effort as what makes one brick truly distinct from another.  This is why they sign and date their work, even if that notion sounds odd in the context of brick making.

The possibility of looking at individuation from either of these perspectives is what Simondon means by "hylomorphic ambivalence".  Both the master and the worker subscribe to the hylomorphic schema.  One sees all the individuation coming from the side of form while the other sees it coming from the side of matter.  Yet both acknowledge the necessity of both terms, both think that what is made by joining them as a fully distinct individual, and both subconsciously pattern this individuality on their own subjective idea of possession. 

Neither orderer nor worker looks at what makes something an individual in terms of what we would today call artisanal production.  Neither sees the entire supply chain of events (so to speak) as the complete set of transformations necessary for individuation.  This coffee, shade grown during the Guatemalan spring and harvested by a team of enanos dressed as superheroes, was hand roasted by Barack Obama before being brewed with glacial spring water at exactly 204 degrees.  That's what makes it this coffee ... which you're paying $17 a cup for.  I exaggerate the example to illustrate the type of 'de-commoditized' thinking we encounter more frequently these days, in which every aspect of the production of something is preserved as a transformation relevant to the individuation of the final product.  Simondon would have loved the farm to table movement.