Gilbert Simondon (2 October 1924-7 February 1989) was a French philosopher best known for his theory of individuation and his work on the field of philosophy of technology
Simondon's work is characterized by his philosophical approach on information theory, communication studies, technology and the natural sciences.
Although largely overlooked in his lifetime, the advent of the Information Age has collaborated to a reappraisal and increased interest in Simondon's books, with him being seen as someone who has precisely predicted and described the social effects and paradigms technical objects and technology itself have offered in the 21st century.
Despite Simondon's thought having remained largely alienated amidst the effervescent wave of post-structuralism of his age in his homeland of France and Europe in general, a few colleagues have been pioneers in praising Simondon's writings and demonstrating the influence and weight of his intellectual work in their own, the most notable being Gilles Deleuze, whose The Logic of Sense is heavily influenced by Simondon's theory of individuation, and Herbert Marcuse, who takes inspiration from Simondon's notions of the effects of technological alienation in society in his book One-Dimensional Man. Today, Simondon's work influence can most clearly be seen in the works of Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler and Yuk Hui.
Born in Saint-Étienne, Simondon was a student of philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem, philosopher Martial Guéroult, and phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne. He defended his doctoral dissertations in 1958 at the University of Paris.
His main thesis, L'individuation à la lumière des notions de Forme et d'Information, was published in two parts, the first in 1964 under the title L'individu et sa génèse physico-biologique at the Presses Universitaires de France, although the second part, L'individuation psychique et collective was only published by Aubier in 1989. While his main thesis, which laid the foundations of his thinking, was not widely read until it was commented upon by Gilles Deleuze and, more recently, Bruno Latour and Bernard Stiegler, his complementary thesis, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques was published by Aubier immediately after being completed, in 1958, and had an instant impact on a wide audience. It was only in 2005 that Jérôme Millon published a complete edition of the main thesis.
In L'individuation psychique et collective, Simondon developed a theory of individual and collective individuation, in which the individual subject is considered as an effect of individuation, rather than as a cause. Thus the individual atom is replaced by the never-ending process of individuation.
Simondon also conceived of pre-individual fields as the resources making individuation itself possible. Individuation is an always incomplete process, always leaving a pre-individual left-over, itself making possible future individuations. Furthermore, psychic individuation always creates both an individual and a collective subject, which individuate themselves together. Simondon criticized Norbert Wiener's theory of cybernetics, arguing that Right from the start, Cybernetics has accepted what all theory of technology must refuse: a classification of technological objects conducted by means of established criteria and following genera and species.
Simondon aimed to overcome the shortcomings of cybernetics by developing a general phenomenology of machines.
More information: Radical Philosophy
This defense appears as a defense of man based
on the assumption that technical objects contain no human reality.
We should like to show that culture fails to take
into account that there is a human reality in technical reality and that,
if it is to fully play its role, culture must come to incorporate
technical entities into its body of knowledge and its sense of values.
Gilbert Simondon
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