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.

Foundations of the Hylomorphic Schema: Technology of Form-Taking

In reflecting on Simondon's introduction to the problem of individuation, I began to notice that the two traditional responses he mentions as insufficient approaches to the question aren't equally insufficient.  Both atomism and hylomorphism beg the question of how the individual is generated.  In the case of atomism, this failure is obvious; atoms are already individuals, so from a philosophical perspective, it would be tautological to use them to explain individuation.  But the problem with hylomorphism is more subtle.  This theory, as the Greek etymology implies (matter + form), sees the individual as something produced through an encounter of matter and form.  What exactly is wrong with this schema?  Is it that the matter or the form are already implicitly individuals?  Or does the question begging aspect of this schema lie elsewhere?  These are the themes Simondon takes up in the next section with his detailed consideration of brick manufacturing.  

1.1.1.1 The Conditions of Individuation

How does an individual brick come to exist?  For example, this brick, right here at the corner of my chimney?  This seems like a simple question.  The brick is produced when clay matter is formed into a parallelepiped.  This technical operation is the ur-analogy for the whole hylomorphic schema.  An abstract form is stamped or molded on a completely compliant matter.  The brick happens when you stuff clay into a mold and let it dry.  The production of other individuals happens in the same way -- eg. stuff a soul into a body and you get a person.  This model is so ingrained in our thinking that it's almost common sense.  So it's surprising to find that when we consider the situation more carefully, it turns out that the real process of molding is much more complicated than we tend to think.  It's only when we consider the process of brick production abstractly that we can see the brick as the product of an abstract geometric form and an abstract homogenous matter.  As Simondon points out:

If we take fine-grained sand, moisten it, and pack it into a brick mold, then we will get a heap of sand and not a brick after we take it out of the mold. (I, 22)

It turns out that both the matter and the form necessary to produce an individual brick are not simply lying around in nature, but are each the product of a long process of preparation.  The clay matter has to be dug out of the swamp, cleaned, rolled, and turned into a material plastic enough to be molded yet firm enough to maintain its shape.  Likewise, the geometric form of the parallelepiped has to be given material form as a wooden or metal mold with sufficient rigidity to hold the clay in place.  And then these two fabricated objects have to be brought together in the appropriate way.  The abstract encounter of abstract form and abstract matter only makes an abstract brick -- any brick, all the bricks, always the same brick. To make the real individual brick, different from all the other bricks in my chimney, we need to bring together a particular bit of clay, already formed in a particular way, with a particular mold that materializes a geometric form.  Individuation is a complicated operation through which the abstractions of matter and form are separately elaborated and then brought together at a real time and place.  The hylomorphic schema hides all this complexity from us.  It's as if we asked how this glass of milk got here, and were told, "assume the cow is a point in space ..."  In other words, it begs Simondon's question because it never tells us how form and matter come together to create an individual.  Somehow this is just supposed to magically happen when we put the idea of a plastic matter together with the idea of a shape.  As we know from On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Simondon is much too technically literate to stop at this level of explanation.  He will wade deep into the details of how bricks are made to show us the material, energetic conditions necessary to produce them.  

Still, his consideration of brick making as an example is still meant to illustrate some general rules about how matter and form interact.  The first key point is that matter is not inert, but contains the capacity to be formed as a potential energy.  In the case of the clay, he emphasizes that the clay has been carefully elaborated so as to become homogeneous and plastic.  When it is placed in the mold, this allows the pressure of the mold to be distributed evenly throughout the entire mass of clay so that all its molecules reach a state of equilibrium with respect to one another.  Imagine how useful your brick would be if only the outside edges were formed of homogenous clay while the interior was mixed together with gravel or sand.  It's the consistent organization of clay on its molecular level that enables it serve as matter for the brick.  The second key point is that form does not operate by simply imposing itself on matter.  Instead, it serves as the limit of matter's own propensity to take on form.  The mold doesn't actively make the brick in its image, as it were.  It simply prevents the clay from oozing into whatever shape would be most convenient for the clay.  The mold translates the geometric form into the clay because it resists the changes of the clay without itself changing.  Imagine how useful your brick mold would be if it were made of cloth.  It's the whole previous preparation of the mold as a hard limit to the clay that enables it to serve as form for the brick.

The upshot is that matter is more active and form more passive than we're used to thinking.  

The matter conveys with it the potential energy being actualized; the form, which is here represented by the mold, plays an informing role by exerting forces without work, forces that limit the actualization of the potential energy momentarily borne by the matter. This energy can be actualized in a given direction with a given rapidity: the form is the limit. The relation between matter and form thus does not take place between inert matter and a form coming from outside: there is a common operation that is on the same level of existence between matter and form; this common level of existence is that of force, which arises from an energy momentarily borne by the matter yet drawn from a state of the total inter-elementary system with a superior dimension that expresses the individuating limitations. (I,26)

If we think about the entire system needed to individuate a brick, we can then see that it's composed of three parts.  There's the part that prepares the matter on a molecular scale, the part which prepares the limiting form on a macro-molecular scale, and there's the brick itself, which is where these two disparate scales meet.  For Simondon, the individual is the point that mediates between two orders of magnitude -- the energies of the matter "below" the individual, and the energies of a system that places a form "above" the individual.  

If we start from the two ends of the technological chain, the parallelepiped and the clay in the quarry, then we can experience the impression of realizing in the technical operation an encounter between two realities of heterogeneous domains and of instituting a mediation through communication between an inter-elementary, macrophysical order larger than the individual and an intra-elementary, microphysical order smaller than the individual. (I, 22)

We might say that form is the product of some larger system that harnesses the behavior of a sub-subsystem we call matter.  

1.1.1.2  Validity of the Hylomorphic Schema; the Dark Zone of the Hylomorphic Schema; Generalization of the Notion of Form-Taking; Modeling, Molding, Modulation

Now that he's investigated how the hylomorphic schema actually functions in the simple example of brick making, Simondon goes on to generalize this model of individuation.  As we've seen, the individual is not produced by an active form imprinting itself on a passive matter.  If we look at the entire system responsible for the operation of individuation, we see that the form acts more like a trigger for matter's own potential to take on a particular organization.  The potential energy latent in the matter itself is actualized when the form coaxes it into some equilibrium state.   

In order to play a role in the technical operation, the pure form must become a system of points of application of the forces of reaction while the raw matter becomes a homogeneous bearer of potential energy. Form-taking is the mutual operation of the form and the matter in a system: the energetic condition is essential, and it is not contributed by the form alone; the whole system is the center of potential energy precisely because form-taking is an in-depth operation within the whole mass, the consequence of which is a state of energetic reciprocity of the matter relative to itself. (I, 29)

Our normal understanding of the hylomorphic model doesn't show us the entire system that gives matter and form the capacity to operate as we imagine them.  So it obscures the fact that forming an individual is always a process of the overall system coming to equilibrium.  Individuation is a dynamic process of form-taking.  Once we re-characterize it in these terms we can see that the schema has much wider application than just stuffing clay into a mold.  Any system that catalyzes a shift to a state of equilibrium is going to be an individuation.  [Obviously, we are going to have to qualify this statement at some point, unless we want to understand a gas coming to thermal equilibrium as an individual.  But even there, the gas comes to equilibrium within some volume, a limit without which the concept of equilibrium threatens to become meaningless.]  

In particular, since we haven't said anything about the time it might take to get to equilibrium, nor how long the state should last, we can use the same hylomorphic schema to describe a process that moves much faster than making bricks.  For example, we can describe the process of signal amplification in a triode in the same terms.  The 'matter' in a triode is the cloud of electrons generated by heating the cathode, which then naturally flow to the anode.  The 'form' is the voltage applied (relative to the cathode) to the grid that sits between cathode and anode.  At any instant, this voltage triggers the electrons to move to a new equilibrium in which they are flowing to the anode more or less rapidly than the previous instant.  Since the electrons sit in a vacuum, we reach this equilibrium very quickly, and when the grid voltage is removed, we lose it equally quickly.  It's as if the triode is a form of continuous temporal molding (and unmolding), one that forces changes in the voltage at the anode into a mold provided by changes into voltage at the grid.  This process of what Simondon calls modulation is precisely what enables the triode to faithfully amplify voltage changes at the grid.  We can fancifully imagine the signal at the grid as a continuous stream of different instantaneous brick molds, which results in the production of correspondingly different individual bricks as the anode signal output.  So the hylomorphic schema can apply across a range of times scales from molding to modulation, with modeling occupying some point between these two.

1.1.1.3  Limits of the Hylomorphic Schema

This final section on hylomorphism gets a little more complicated.  Simondon started investigating hylomorphism because the schema was Aristotle's classic and influential response to the question of how individuals come to be.  He's shown us that the schema has a blind spot at its center -- it does not explain how matter and form are brought together in an interaction -- that is due to the way it considers the operation of individuation only abstractly and torn from its real surrounding context -- the whole system that prepares a substance to serve as matter and prepares a form capable of informing that matter.  In other words, the "dark zone" at the center where matter and form meet is directly related to a lack of concreteness at the periphery where matter and form originate.  One natural development to this line of thought might be for Simondon to propose an updated version of the hylomorphic schema that explicitly includes the entire energetic system that separately prepares matter and form and then brings them together.  This new theory of individuation would represent a sort of extended or generalized hylomorphism, but one that still sees the production of an individual in the moment when matter and form come together.  

This, however, is not the direction that Simondon is going to take.  The reason is that the hylomorphic schema does not seem able to explain the individuation of living beings.  The problem is that even in Simondon's extension of hylomorphism, matter and form are only able to encounter one another by coming to some sort of static equilibrium.  The individual produced in this way is completely finished when the potential energy contained in the matter is actualized through the impact of some triggering form.  What happens to it after that moment falls outside of even our revised hylomorphic schema.  

... at the end of several years or several thousand years, the brick turns back into dust. The individuation is completed in a single stroke; the individuated being is never more perfectly individuated than when it leaves the hands of the craftsman. Thus, there is a certain exteriority of the operation of individuation relative to its result.(I, 33)

In particular, this schema cannot account for individuals that actively maintain or further develop their form -- precisely the hallmarks of a living individual.  With living individuals, there is obviously still a question of equilibrium, but in this case it is a dynamic one.  As the comparison of bricks to triodes made clear, this isn't just a matter of how long the individual can maintains its form, or how quickly it can take on a new form.  The key difference isn't in the absolute stability of the equilibrium with respect to some abstract and universal time scale.  Instead it lies in the fact that the living individual is not done being individual when matter meets form.  Its initial form reacts back upon both internal and external matter and tends to stabilize itself in the short term (homeostasis) and transform itself in the long term (evolution).  In short, the living individual creates a feedback loop between matter and form that cannot be captured by the hylomorphic model.  We might say that this implies a topological distinction between the two models.  And while Simondon doesn't develop the point much here, it's interesting to note for future reference that this feedback loop gives the living being a temporal depth that a technical object like a the brick does not possess. Living individuals carry their history, their hysteresis, within themselves as a continuous trajectory of equilibrium states. 

Conversely, in the living being the individuation is not produced by a single operation that is limited in time; the living being is to itself partially its own principle of individuation; it continues its individuation, and, instead of merely being a result that progressively degrades, the result of an initial operation of individuation becomes the principle of a further individuation. (I, 33)

After being initiated, the living being continues individuating itself; it is simultaneously the individuating system and the partial result of individuation. A new regime of internal resonance is established in the living being, the paradigm of which technology does not provide: a resonance through time created by the recurrence of the result going back toward the principle and becoming principle in turn. (I, 33)

So now we have two competing paradigms for the process of individuation -- a technical and an organic one.  However, rather than trying to adjudicate between these paradigms on the basis of some other philosophical principle, Simondon first poses a more interesting question: are these the only types of individuation?  Is there a non-organic individuation that nevertheless is not covered by the technical analogy of the hylomorphic scheme?  

Of course, normally we think of the individuation of a brick as a non-organic individuation, but Simondon's whole analysis has shown us that hylomorphism's description of this process is blind at its center because of what it takes for granted at its periphery -- the human purposes that are involved in the production of any technical object.  Because ultimately, it's humans who set up the energetic system that prepares and communicates the matters and forms that produce things like bricks and triodes.  And as we saw in On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, you cannot discuss technology without also discussing the life that uses it.  Even if we extend hylomorphism as Simondon has suggested, we are still forced to somehow bracket these human purposes because they come from a part of the system that we cannot explain by recursively applying the same schema, ie. they come from living individuals. So it turns out that the hylomorphic schema cannot provide a genuine theory of non-organic individuation because the very concepts of matter and form it employs arise inside a system that depends on a previous organic individuation.  As Simondon hints (top of 34), this doesn't mean that there can't be a theory of non-organic individuation, it just means that because of the way the hylomorphic model is inevitably tied to technical individuation, it cannot succeed as that theory.  

Thus, the hylomorphic schema outside technology is insufficient in its commonplace types because it ignores the very center of the technical operation of form-taking and leads in this sense to ignoring the role played by the energetic conditions in form-taking. Furthermore, even if it is reestablished and completed as a matter-form-energy triad, the hylomorphic schema runs the risk of improperly objectifying a contribution of the living in the technical operation; the intention of the fabricator is what constitutes the system thanks to which energetic exchange is established between matter and energy in form-taking; this system is not part of the individuated object; however, the individuated object is thought by the human being as having an individuality as a fabricated object relative to the fabrication. (I, 34)

So just what is this larger system that envelops the conditions of technical individuation, that presumes a prior organic individuation necessary to get the balls of matter and form rolling towards one another?  Society.  In the final analysis, the hylomorphic model is a social schema that we've elevated into a natural principle.  In a way, this is an observation that today sounds like a fairly obvious application of concerns about social justice.  In Simondon's day, it could have been thought of as a species of Marxism.  It's the master who thinks it's enough that form be thought for it to be somehow magically imposed on a compliant matter that is always around, just waiting to take orders.  It's the master who needn't concern himself with entering the workshop to investigate how the orders are carried out at its center.  And it's the master who inevitably presumes that an active form meeting a passive matter is the natural schema of the universe; sic semper erat, et sic semper erit.  As the kids would say these days, the hylomorphic model needs to check its privilege.  

Simondon, however, takes this deconstructive argument in a deeper direction.  He not interested in simply rejecting the hylomorphic model, but in replacing it with a more comprehensive schema that would contain the hylomorphic model as a special case.  After all, hylomorphism cannot simply be waved away as 'wrong' given its 2,500 year reign.  That attitude is about as useful as saying that Newton's theory of gravity was 'wrong'.  We need to explain its remarkable success as well as its ultimate failure to solve our problem of individuation.

As begin to think about this problem, we really start to see the complexity of Simondon's perspective unfold.  The technological individuation of the hylomorphic schema happens 'inside' or as a sub-system of the organic individuation we call human life.  Its abstractions of form and matter appear to explain technical individuals only because we regard those individuals from a strictly functional perspective.  In other words, we don't really want to know how this brick, right here in my chimney, got produced by this machine operated by this worker, then laid by this mason, etc ... We just want to know how 'bricks in general' get made, because we want to know what is necessary to make something function as a brick, in service of some larger construction we're interested in.  We're not interested in technical objects in themselves, but just insofar as they are for us.  

In this sense, the hylomorphic schema is perhaps only seemingly technological: it is the reflection of vital processes in an abstractly known operation that derives its consistency from what is made by a living being for other living beings. This is how the great paradigmatic capacity of the hylomorphic schema is explained: coming from life, it returns to life and is applied to life, but it has a deficiency that stems from the fact that the apprehension of consciousness that made it explicit has grasped it through the improperly simplified case of technical form-taking; it grasps types more so than individuals and examples of a model more so than realities. (I,34)

If we back up a level though, we can ask how it is that living individuals become capable of creating something like the elaborate system of technical individuation we have just described.  In other words, how did chimps learn to make bricks?  In Simondon's hands though, this question gets very deep very quick.  Because he sees the invention of the technical as part of the ongoing process of organic individuation.  So it's not that each chimp turned into a finished and completely individuated human being who then happened to start cranking out bricks and believing in the hylomorphic model.  These latter are part of what individuates us as humans, a process that is layered on as an extension that transforms an initial mammalian individuation.  Chimps don't learn to make bricks; learning to make bricks makes us human.  Learning to make bricks leads us to see the world in terms of its utility.  So to fully understand living individuation we have to see how it creates the conditions for this extension into technical individuation.

If an experience of the vital is the condition for a representation of the technical, the representation of the technical in turn becomes one of the conditions for the knowledge of the vital. (I,35)

This casts the political question we already broached in a new light.  Because now we can see that it's only the development of an organic individuation through a particular social individuation that enables us to come up with the idea of a technology that functions according to the hylomorphic model.  We only become human through interacting with other humans, in a recursive bootstrapping.  Contrary to our casual understanding of 'human nature', this social domain does not begin where the biological individuation stops.  In Simondon's concept of individuation, the higher levels are always involved in a feedback loop with the lower levels such that the individual (at any level) is never finished being produced.  New levels of individuals ("technological society" as an individual) are only produced through the potential of what is unfinished at the level below (biological humans) and the new production therefore leads to a transformation of its underlying substrate (producing the 'subject' required for a social hierarchy).  This feedback is difficult to write about and my language has probably become a little sloppy.  The basic idea is that we chimps wouldn't be talking about a technological individuation where form is imposed on matter unless we had simultaneously gotten involved in a social system that produces terms corresponding to form and matter.  Before there can be a technical operation that appears hylomorphic to those involved, there needs to be a social operation that produces the subjects who can view it from that perspective.  There's no hylomorphism without master and slave.  

If there were nothing but the living individual being and the technical operation, then the hylomorphic schema perhaps could not be constituted. In fact, it indeed seems that the middle term between the living domain and the technical domain, at the origin of the hylomorphic schema, was social life. What the hylomorphic schema primarily reflects is a socialized representation of labor and an equally socialized representation of the individual living being; the coincidence between these two representations is the mutual foundation of the extension of the schema from one domain to the other and the guarantee of its validity in a determined culture. (I,35)