Form and Substance

I'm not going to cover chapter 3 in the detail to which loyal readers have become accustomed.  It would require too long of a detour into the history of quantum mechanics to do it justice.  In addition, most of this chapter was not published with the original edition of the book for good reason -- it's an extremely technical tangent to the main philosophical argument that also ends rather inconclusively.  So I just want to place this chapter in its context and extract its main contribution to Simondon's overall theory of individuation.

We ended chapter 2 by considering the most abstract version of this theory.  Individuation requires both a discontinuous or singular component and a continuous energetic one.  Crystal formation required both the energy available everywhere in the amorphous material as well as the elementary discontinuity of the periodic spacing of crystal atoms to serve as a seed capable of polarizing this material.  The crystal as an individual was actually the process of propagation of a discontinuity though a continuous milieu, the resonance between levels that allows a micro discontinuity to amplify into a macro phase shift in milieu.  In this sense, the crystal is the mobile limit at which more crystal can be made.  In principle, this limit has no largest upper bound; the crystal will grow indefinitely large as conditions allow.  However, it does have a smallest lower bound; the periodic spacing of crystallization sites means that the crystal can never grow between those sites, or at a scale smaller than them.  This is what Simondon means by the "elementary discontinuity" needed for the process of crystallization.  Every individual requires some singularity to get it started.  

In this context, it makes sense to ask if there is an absolute smallest elementary discontinuity that is required for any individual at all to form.  Notice though that this elementary discontinuity cannot possess the substantial identity of the classical atom.  It's role in Simondon's scheme is to serve as a singularity that is capable of propagating itself into a continuum.  Here we start to see something that reminds us of the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics.  The electron isn't a simple particle with a given size, mass, and position but also a wave that can appear anywhere and even interfere with itself.  Somehow, when we get down to this very smallest level, we suddenly find it spontaneously spreading out everywhere.  And we also find that its structure is always associated with discontinuous changes in energy levels (energy quanta) -- Einstein's famous formula recapitulates Simondon's assertion that relation inter-converts with substance.  This may all sound intriguing, and many philosophers would surely have stopped here.  Simondon, of course, is never happy with this sort of vague analogy, so he spends the next 70 pages surveying the entire history of quantum mechanics (up to when he was writing in 1958) to try and flesh it out.  Unfortunately, most of the meat of it is quite simply above my pay grade.

In the end though, these long reflections on quantum mechanics bring us back to the question of continuity and discontinuity, energy and structure.  It's clear that Simondon's notion of individuation requires both, and that the general process is one of successive "transductions" of energy into structure.  A propos of some reflections on the quantum measurement problem that I won't go into, Simondon finally characterizes individuation as shifting between a deterministic mode in which a system evolves smoothly in time (wave mechanics), and an indeterministic one where the system undergoes an instantaneous structural transformation (measurement).   

Furthermore, if we contemplate microphysical reality directly, an interpretation of individuation starting from the phenomena of structural change would aim to consider becoming as essentially linked to the operations of individuation that are carried out in successive transformations; determinism would remain applicable as a borderline case when the system considered is not the theater of any individuation, i.e. when no exchange takes place between energy and structure (which would modify the system's structures), thus leaving it topologically identical to what it was in its previous states; on the contrary, indeterminism would seem like a borderline case when a complete structural change manifests in a system with the transition from one order of magnitude to another; this is the case, for example, of the modifications brought to a system by the fission of an atomic nucleus: intranuclear energies, which up to that point belong to the internal system of this nucleus, are unleashed by fission and can act as a gamma photon or a neutron on the bodies that belong to a system situated on a scale larger than that of the atomic nucleus. (I, 158)

These two modes of evolution characterize the system's "chronology" and "topology" respectively.  While we can conceive of each of them separately and independently, in general they are tangled together, and individuation is precisely the process by which these knots get tied in feedback loops.

The general case is that of a certain level of correlation between a system's chronology and topology, a level which is moreover variable due to the vicissitudes of its own becoming; a system reacts on itself not only in the sense of the principle of entropy through the general law of its internal energetic transformations, but also by modifying its own structure through time. The becoming of a system is the manner in which it individuates, i.e. essentially the manner in which it is conditioned according to the different structures and successive operations through which it reverberates within itself and phase-shifts relative to its initial state. Determinism and indeterminism are merely borderline cases, because there is a becoming of systems: this becoming is the becoming of their individuation; there is a reactivity of systems with respect to themselves. (I, 159)

Becoming, then is neither deterministic nor indeterministic, but a sort of punctuated equilibrium where each new topological exclamation point is produced by some internal resonance in the chronological dynamics of the previous stable era.  Fission serves as the perfect example of a phase shift because it is created through a runaway feedback loop which makes every atom resonate with the others in a way that completely alters the structure of the system, converting atoms back into energetic radiation.  The A bomb is a singularity.  Notice, though, that the A bomb is not really an individual.  Resonance here leads to a  complete conversion of structure back into energy.  Instead of a deterministic physical system operating at the atomic scale, we have a new deterministic system operating at a  planetary one.  But these two scales are connected by a single instant of discontinuity in the form of the critical threshold at which runaway fission begins to take place.  For Simondon, the true individual is the ongoing process by which different scales of reality can become related, the ongoing, semi-stable, self-modifying inter-conversion of energy and structure.  In this sense, the nuclear reactor is more individuated than the bomb because it provides for an ongoing communication between structure and energy and a regulation of their inter-conversion (I, 161).

At this point, we can see how the long detour through quantum mechanics leads us directly to the discussion of the living individual that will come next.  We wanted to know whether reality was fundamentally continuous or discontinuous at its lowest level.  And the clear answer is no.  These two aspects of reality always appear as complementary pairs not because they both characterize the real but because they are both the outcome of a real process of becoming that individuates a system.  Simondon calls them the "dimensions" of the system because they reflect the time and space, the chronology and topology, of the individuals it produces.  These are the existing (meta)stable structures that move around, or on the contrary the new structures that fill the system up as it evolves.

From this point of view, it seems possible to understand why the antagonistic representations of the continuous and the discontinuous, of matter and energy, of structure and operation, are not usable except as complementary pairs; this is because these notions define opposite and extreme aspects of the orders of reality between which individuation is established; but the operation of individuation is the active center of this relation; it is the latter that is the unity of this center that splits into aspects which are complementary for us, albeit in the real they are paired by the continuous and transductive unity of intermediary being, what we call here internal resonance; the complementary aspects of the real are extreme aspects that define the dimensionality of the real. Since we can only grasp reality through its manifestations, i.e. when it changes, we only perceive extreme complementary aspects; but, rather than the real, what we perceive are dimensions of the real; we grasp its chronology and topology of individuation without being able to grasp the pre-individual real that subtends this transformation. (I, 162)

The real process of individuation (which for Simondon is the real, full stop) lies in the ongoing back and forth between these dimensions of continuity and discontinuity.  And the ability to constantly shuttle back and forth between these becomes the defining characteristic of the living individual.  After all, it's distinctiveness doesn't lie in a special type of matter that makes it essentially different from the physical individual, but in a special organization of matter that leaves it more sensitive and responsive to changes in the material around it. In the living individual, structure and energy go back and forth constantly, not in one swift explosion of form. 

... there is physical individuation when the system is capable of receiving information a single time, then develops and amplifies this initial singularity by individuating in a non-self-limited way. If the system is capable of successively receiving several inputs of information (of compatibilizing several singularities instead of iterating the single and initial singularity cumulatively and through transductive amplification), then individuation is vital, self-limited and organized. (I, 163)

Finally, this leads us to a really unique perspective on what makes the living individual different.  As we've seen, Simondon's understands the individual as an unfinished entity.  As far back as the introduction we observed that 'higher level' individuals like the living, psychic, or social, were not built on top of one another like layers of a pyramid where the completion of the previous layer is essential to support the following one.  Instead, each new level is a continuation or prolongation of what remains unfinished and unstable at the previous level.  It's exactly this instability that allows the individual to process any new information, to be affected by the world around it on an ongoing basis.  The more individual we become the more unstable we become as matter, and the more different things can affect us.  Higher levels are then characterized by a slowing down of the transition to a more stable state.  Just like the nuclear reactor, we have to catch the explosive phase transition somewhere in the middle and (partially) stabilize this inherently unstable moment.  What we're effectively describing here is a sort of physical neoteny.  The living individual prolongs the impressionable youth of a physical system's phase transition.

    According to this way of viewing things, vital individuation would come to be inserted in physical individuation by suspending its course, by slowing it down and by making it capable of propagating in the inchoate state. The living individual would be, in some sense and on its most initial levels, a crystal in the nascent state that is amplified without stabilizing.
    To relate this schema of interpretation to the most current notions, we can appeal to the idea of neoteny and generalize these types of rapports between classes of individuals by supposing a slew of possible neotenic developments in the category of living beings. In a certain sense, animal individuation can be considered more complex than vegetal individuation. However, the animal can also be considered an inchoate plant that develops and becomes organized while conserving the motive, receptive and reactional possibilities that appear in the reproduction of plants. (I, 164)