Abstract

Simondon is scarcely known to English-language philosophers, though with these translations that may begin to change. They have been a long time coming. Simondon writes a complicated academic prose in French and calls on an unusually wide range of expertise, but reading his books is worth the effort. Individuation in the Light of Notions of Form and Information (1964) is a dense and at times technical contribution to the philosophy of biology, though there is little in metaphysics that is not implicated in his argument. Science and philosophy are enjoined to pursue knowledge of individuation, a genetic process, rather than starting with individuals of any sort. Individuation, the process, is primitive, and individuals a relative reality.On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958) is the best work ever in the philosophy of technology. Contributions by Heidegger and others pale in comparison. Simondon analyzes a wide variety of technical objects with a mastery of engineering science. Heidegger would not know a diode from a triode. He thought meditation on ancient Greek words would take philosophy closer to “the essence of Teknik” than anything learned from science and engineering. Simondon shows why this view is mistaken. In this one, very technical difference (diode and triode), which is replicated ubiquitously in modern technology, he discerns what makes something technical rather than natural or accidental. He applies his thesis about the priority of individuation. Technical objects are phases of a technical individuation that he calls concretization, by which their operation becomes more internally resonant, as for example in the step from diode to triode (to pentode, to transistor and integrated circuit). There is much, much more of value in this book; for instance, his argument is implicitly anti-Marxist. Workers’ alienation is not attributable to economy. Industrial technology alienates workers because machines do what used to be the most satisfying, skillful (and expensive) part of industrial production, leaving workers with only regulative and custodial functions—which is alienating to people born, as we all are, to the technical life.