The third and final part of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects represents a substantial departure in style and and content from the first two. All the detailed examples of the inner workings of concrete technical objects disappear, and instead we get a much more abstract treatise about the genetic relationship between technical thought and other types of thought. In fact, generally I found Simondon's complicated schema for organizing the various types of thought a bit too abstract. Nevertheless, there are some really interesting ideas here, and I think the places he accords to philosophical and aesthetic thought in particular exerted a substantial influence on Deleuze. So while I don't think I'm going to delve too deeply into Simondon's schematization of how thought develops, I do want to reflect a little on the motor that powers this development. By understanding this motor, we'll see how it relates to the earlier description of the development of technics, and thus grasp the fundamental concept of the book as a whole. And we'll also glimpse an outline of an early chapter in my forthcoming study: The Nondual Delueze.
The motor that powers Simondon's whole philosophy is the nonduality of figure and ground. A simple concrete image of this would be something like Rubin's Vase or any of the other images beloved of Gestalt Psychology. In all these images, figure and ground are clearly distinct, but reciprocally determined; the figure is only a figure on the basis of a specific ground, but the ground only appears as the ground of a specific figure. They are co-adapted to the point of inseparability, and yet we seem to be able to perceive only one at a time. So figure and ground are not the same, but they're also not different. They form a sort of unity, but not one composed of independent pieces. In short, figure and ground are nondual.
I've called this nonduality a motor because Simondon conceives of it in dynamic terms. An original nondual splits into figure and ground. And then each side of this division split again into its own relative figure and ground. Simondon conceives of each of these splits by analogy to the idea of a physical phase transition. The same 'stuff' (in this case some nondual ur-ground of pure potential) can behave very differently depending on the circumstances. However, while this schema is dynamic in the sense that each split generates a new figure-ground pair (and the method is hence is "genetic"), Simondon immediately distinguishes it from that other great philosophy of movement -- the Hegelian dialectic.
This schema is very different from the dialectical schema, because it implies neither necessary succession, nor the intervention of negativity as a motor of progress; furthermore, opposition, within the schema of phases, only exists in the particular case of a two-phased structure. (METO, 173)
[To these comments, we might add some related thoughts Deleuze articulated in Chapter 5 of his Nietzsche book. The Hegelian dialectic is the sterile adventure of a pre-determined self-identical unity. It's crucial not to confuse monism with nondualism, not to denature immanence by putting it inside anything other than itself.]
In fact, while Simondon will also go on to describe various ways that the two sides of each respective split can be rejoined or at least reconciled, his rigorous use of the phase transition metaphor gives this synthesis a completely different character than the dialectic. For example, the sentence just prior to the citation about the dialectic refers explicitly to the idea of the triple point.
The existence of a plurality of phases finally defines the reality of a neutral center of equilibrium in relation to which there is a phase shift. (METO, 173)
We have to keep this image in mind when Simondon frequently slips into talking about the types of synthesis capable of bridging two phases as if they were "seeking unity". The phase equilibrium point doesn't negate the existence of the phases, or unify them in some final moment of aufheben. On the contrary, it's the point where both phases, both figure and ground, can coexist as distinct.
Simondon describes this nondual phase transition schema as genetic, because it generates the whole variety of human experience, including, of particular interest in this book, technical experience. While he talks about the schema in terms of the generation of novel types of thought, it's more fundamentally a question of constructing the individuals who can have these thoughts as an experience, as a being-in-the-world. This means that, in the final analysis, METO should be seen as an application of Simondon's theory of individuation to technology (a theory I presume is fully developed in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information). The splits into figure and ground, together with the equilibrium points that put the split terms back into relation, are all "modes of existence" that define an individual at a given instant.
Now, having criticized Simondon's scheme as too abstract, I've given an even more abstract summary of it. Perhaps a diagram representing the specific splits and reunifications would help bring us down to earth.
As I observed at the outset, the scheme is complicated. But the basic idea is that every split is a split between figure and ground, between object and subject, and every double sided arrow represents a new nondual equilibrium of what has been put asunder. So the magical splits into technics and religion before aesthetics intervenes as a mediator that reconstructs the lost "unity" (Simondon never uses the more accurate term "nonduality"). The technical mode of existence approaches the world as a set of figural objects available for human use, while the religious mode emphasizes the grounding totality of the divine subject. Then, technics and religion each split again into figure and ground, though this time Simondon talks about a split between each domain's theory and praxis, rather than subject and object. Technics splits into engineering, which deals with the figural forms or functional technical schemas we've seen elsewhere in the book, and physics (in the Greek sense), which deals with inductively investigating the grounding nature that powers all these schemas. Likewise, religion splits into theology, which attempts to deduce the logical ground of being, and morality, which judges the figures of human action. In an interesting twist, Simondon regroups these second order splits into ethics, which contains their practical, figural components, and science, which groups their theoretical, ground components. Science thus has both a technical and inductive side, as well as a religious and deductive side (which Simondon associates with mathematics). In other words, both science and ethics contain a mix of figure and ground elements -- eg. science is an interaction between the inductive ground of the figure (physics) and the deductive figure of the ground (theology). However, it's only philosophy, by relating science and ethics that finally establishes a new equilibrium which aims to recover the aesthetic and magical unity.
This kind of schema raises a bunch of questions, and Simondon doesn't do much to address them (at least here). My biggest general objection is simply how abstract this all is. Does it really help us understand theology, say, or aesthetic experience? And should we really treat either of those as a monolithic entity? I might argue that various aspects of this schema -- like the idea of a phase transition, and the nondual reciprocality of figure and ground -- found their way into Deleuze's philosophy. If that's correct though, they appear as the outcome of a concrete investigation of a particular philosopher or subject matter. Starting with a specific situation seems to me a much better method of approaching the relationship between various modes of thought or human existence. Then there are particular issues that cry out for clarification. For example, the magical universe, which Simondon describes as a network of related special points (he does not use the term "singularities"), is a world in which figure and ground are already distinct, but nevertheless reciprocally interwoven so as to be inseparable. He calls it the first "structuration" of the world. Which only begs the question of what the world, the ground, was like before it was structured. No doubt, this is a difficult issue, but some take on it seems essential. And then there is the squirrely question of what sort of subjectivity is associated with the equilibrium types of thought. Thought with a clearly distinct object, even if this object is the human subject, implicitly defines a relative subjective position. But what of a thought that holds subject and object as simultaneous aspects of some larger experience? Where does the thinker of such a thought stand, so to speak? Simondon talks about "philosophical intuition" as a mode of knowledge between the operational mode of ethics and the contemplative mode of science, one that integrates those modes by following the trajectory of their development (diagrammed above). In addition, he makes clear that such a thought would be "analogical", in the sense that it sees each of these modes (in fact, every mode) as an analogous manifestation of the figure-ground split that power everything and brings anything into existence. In a moment reminiscent of the way each of Leibniz's monads contains the whole world, we see that every process of individuation is ultimately an analogy for every other. in a sense, there's only one process. However, just saying that there should in general be such an intermediary type of thought, doesn't sufficiently explain how it works. And in particular, calling this 'analog' thinking seems to invite the obvious question of what, exactly each process of coming-into-being is an analogy for? While I'll touch on this problem below, I'm curious whether Simondon addresses these issues more fully somewhere else.
At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the titular technical objects. There are actually multiple levels of connection between Simondon's genetic analysis of thought and the theory of the technical object he presented in the first two parts of the book. But the most important and interesting one is the way both theories revolve around a process of recurrent causality or feedback. From the outset, Simondon defined the technical individual as one one whose elements come together in such a tight mutual conditioning that none of them would function as they should without all of them functioning that way. This recurrent feedback created an individuated unit that concretized an abstract technical schema as a real technical object. In other words, the process of concretization we discussed earlier is actually a process by which the two aspects of the technical object (engineering and physics in the diagram) are synthesized into a single functional unity. Technical concretization is a analogy for how a neutral equilibrium can be established between the phases of figure and ground. Figure and ground become involved in a feedback loop that ends up blurring their distinction in the same way that technical concretization ended up blurring the distinction between machine and associated milieu. And this feedback between figure and ground is actually genetic. It creates a new type of thought or technical object.
While I haven't explored all its implications, I think that adding the idea of recurrent causality to our understanding of nonduality has the potential to open up a deeper understanding of the latter. For example, people often speak of a "unitive" meditative state. However, this word hasn't described my experience very accurately (so far). To me, its feels much more like an experience of non-difference that centers around an interaction with the world so fluid that there's simply no room left for a fixed identity. What seems to have disappeared here is not the distinctness of objects or experiences, but any distinct supplementary dimension that would be required to represent those experiences as belonging to a subject. The sense is of becoming flush or level with experience, being experience rather than having it. Does the concept of recurrent causality help us conceptualize something like that?
But I digress. I mentioned that there were several levels of connection between part 3 and the earlier parts. Now you can probably see how this is actually a result of the way Simondon scheme makes everything an analogy for figure-ground feedback. So it appears at the level of the split between technical figure and technical ground as technical concretization. But it also appears at the level of the relationship between ethics and science. Recall that one of Simondon's deepest points was that cybernetics has the potential to help us see how technical finality (goal directed utility) is just one mode of living. Modern machines are really just frozen forms of human intention. They can't be understood without reference to their concrete inner workings, but they also cannot be understood without reference to the life of the humans who use them. In this context, Simondon's goal was to create a technical culture that functioned as a higher level, virtual, analog of the artisan. This culture would investigate how machines worked, what they tended to be used for, and, crucially, would other possible uses we might have for them, and thus for ourselves. In short, he was encouraging us to become involved in a feedback loop with our machines at a level between the technical and what we might colloquially call the philosophical or even religious. What are all these machines for? What are they doing to us? What are we doing to ourselves? What is the meaning of life?
Of course, the point is not to pronounce judgement on this question, but just the opposite. We want to open it up. And one obvious but often overlooked ways to do that is by examining the ever more salient fact that we surround ourselves with machines. They are clearly a part of how we become who we are today. Likewise, these machines only become what they are, that is, become fully technical, when we restore their evolving human context alongside a deep understanding of their inner workings. In this sense, no object can be technical in and of itself. Technicity is a phase of development that can only be fully understood through Simondon's more abstract scheme. Thus we could describe the recurrent causality that creates a neutral point amongst the phases as a sort of becoming-technical that can, perhaps counter-intuitively, serve to restore our broader integration with the world.
The technicity of technical objects can thus exist at two different levels: original and primitive technical objects, which appeared as soon as magical thought ceased having an important functional signification, are indeed the real depositaries of technicity, as tools and instruments; but they are objects only to the extent that they can be put into action by a user; the users gestures also belong to techni cal reality, even if they are contained in a living being that places its perceptive power, its functions of elaboration and invention, at the service of the technical task; the real unity is that of the task rather than that of the tool, but the task cannot be objectivated and can only be lived, experienced, accomplished, and not strictly speaking, reflected upon [réfléchie]. At the second level, technical objects are part of technical ensembles. Consequently, at the first level or at the second level, technical objects cannot be considered as absolute realities and as existing by themselves, even after having been constructed. Their technicity can be understood only through the integration of the activity of a human user or the functioning o f a technical ensemble. It would thus not be legitimate to seek to understand the technicity of an object on the basis of an induction comparable to that which one can apply to natural beings; the technical object, which never harbors all of technicity on its own, either because it is a tool or because it is the element in an ensemble, must be known by philosophical thought, i.e., by a thought that has the intuition of the coming-into-being of the modes of relation between man and the world. (METO, 245)
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