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)
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