All posts filed under: metastability

A Short List of Gilbert Simondon’s Vocabulary

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comments 17
affectivity / allagmatic / becoming / Disparation / emotivity / ensemble / form / hylemorphism / individualization / individuation / information / metastability / milieu / model / modularity / ontogenesis / potential / preindividual / signal / signification / Simondon / subject / system / Transduction / transindividual

1. Affectivity -This term designates a relation between an individualized being and the pre-individual milieu; it is thus heterogeneous to individualized reality. This is why Simondon claims that affectivity, more than perception, indicates a spirituality that is greater than the individualized being (the Sublime) because perception is merely the functions of the structures interior to this being (L’Individuation psychique et collective, p. 108–hereafter cited as IPC). Simondon writes that affectivity is the ground of emotion, […]

Translation: Simondon, Completion of Section I, Chapter 1, The Individual and Its Physico-Biological Genesis

Friday, October 19, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comments 8
abstract machine / assemblage / autopoeisis / becoming / being / change / communication / complexity / differentiation / Disparation / formalization / French Translation / individuation / information / materiality / metastability / model / modularity / morphogenesis / morphology / ontogenesis / ontology / philosophy of science / production / self-actualization / Simondon / singularities / structure / system / technology / Untranslated Theory

In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather ‘metastable,’ endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed. (Potential energy is the energy of the pure event, whereas forms of actualization correspond to the realization of the event). In the second place, singularities posses a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a […]

Translation: Simondon and the Physico-Biological Genesis of the Individual

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comments 6
abstraction / French Translation / individuation / metastability / morphology / ontogenesis / ontology / Simondon

Simondon, Gilbert. L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1964. Original Translation by Taylor Adkins. Chapter One: Form and Matter Section I—Foundations of the Hylemorphic Model: Technology of the Capture of Form 1. The Conditions of Individuation: pp. 27-39. The notions of form and matter can help solve the problem of individuation only if they are first compared to its position. So if by the contrast it was discovered that the […]

A Sketch of Gilbert Simondon

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comment 1
becoming / being / biology / equilibrium / flux / individuation / metastability / ontogenesis / ontology / Simondon / singularities

Simondon, Gilbert. “The Genesis of the Individual.” Trans. Mark Cohen and Sanford Kwinter. Incorporations. Ed. Jonathan Crary. New York: Zone, 1992. 296-319. At the same time that a quantity of potential energy (the necessary condition for a higher order of magnitude) is actualized, a portion of matter is organized and distributed (the necessary condition for a lower order of magnitude) into structured individuals of a middle order of magnitude, developing by a mediate process of […]