Vous êtes ici

Biography

"At the moment an individual dies, its activity is incomplete. One could say that it will remain incomplete for as long as individual beings survive that are capable of re-actualizing this active absence, this seed of consciousness and of action."

Gilbert Simondon, L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information

Some Reflections on the Life and Work of Gilbert Simondon

By Nathalie Simondon
Translated from the French by Joe Hughes and Drew Burk

Contents

 

 

Gilbert Simondon was born on October 2nd, 1924 in Saint-Etienne. His father, Hyppolite Simondon, was born in Tence (Haute-Loire) and was severely wounded in Verdun when he was 19. He studied at the School for the Disabled before he became a postal worker in Saint-Etienne. There he met his wife, Nathalie Giraud, who came from a family of farmers from Issoire (Puy-de-Dôme).

Drawn to speculative inquiry at an early age, Gilbert Simondon devoted his life to reflection, research and teaching. This commitment did not, however, distract him from the current social problems. He worked on projects for the improvement of living conditions in prisons, he organized courses for the detained, and he worked with the association for the support of disadvantaged youth. He undertook research on disaster reduction and on security in connection with his research on perception, as well as undertaking studies concerning the role of industrialization in the problems of agricultural workers. He worked at length on the invention of glare-free headlights—a problem he particularly took an interest in. While he dedicated himself to local life, he kept his political work discreet, though he did not hesitate to intervene immediately and publically to protest transgressions of justice and human dignity.

His intellectual curiosity covered all domains of reality, beginning with his philosophical, literary, and historical studies, which naturally sharpened his analytic eye. Whether traveling or walking with his family, at certain moments on vacations or away at conferences, or indeed, in almost any situation, Gilbert Simondon, both thoughtful and observant, always found occasion for reflection, taking notes on scraps of paper, on the blank pages of a book, or on a road map, sharpening his technical knowledge of architecture with careful sketches kept in large notebooks and which he used in his courses. He studied the techniques of various trades and he questioned the artisans. He took an interest in different ways of thinking, in cultural representations and value judgments, in forms of spirituality, and in ways of living and acting. He read and worked almost without interruption. His philosophy library, patiently formed from the beginning of his studies, was remarkably rich. He updated his scientific and technical knowledge throughout his life, regularly reading journals and new works. His personal library contained a number of classic texts, such as Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, which he had procured for his work. For his own work, begun very early in his career, many experiments were conducted in his family house in Tours until 1965, and then in Palaiseau after that. He showed a great sensibility for life in general, to animals and to plants. The mistreatment of animals troubled him deeply, and even excessive tree trimming or weeding could bother him. Gilbert Simondon and his wife Michelle Berger, a Hellenist, had seven children who were naturally all partners in the daily observations, experiments and studies of family life.

This rich and active life was progressively darkened due to physical problems in the mid 1970s and psychological problems in the 80s, prematurely ending his professional life.
Gilbert Simondon died at Palaiseau on February 7, 1989.

Simondon completed his secondary studies at the Lycée de Saint-Etienne. After completing a high school degree in rhetoric (first), he chose his life’s vocation of philosophy, against the advice of his father (who, before Simondon’s scholarly success, had hoped he would have been an engineering student). He prepared for the entrance exam to the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm in the Hypokhâgne and Khâgne at the Lycée du Parc de Lyon, where he studied with Jean Lacroix. These school years during the war were conducted under extremely difficult circumstances as evidenced by the letters exchanged with his professors (Jean Lacroix, Victor-Henri Debidour) in which each inquired about the disappearance of students and of friends like Gilbert Dru. This tragic atmosphere, which Gilbert Simondon shared with “those who were twenty in 44,” made him feel the weight of the period’s existentialist current.

Admitted to the Ecole Normale in 1944 (for the school year beginning in February 1945), saturated with a classical education which he considered to be essential, and interested in the thought of antiquity to the point that for a moment he was tempted to study classics, Simondon confirmed his choice to study philosophy (a choice which Jean Lacriox emphatically encouraged in March of 1944—which is to say, after Simondon had arrived at l’Ecole: “But I want at least to tell you, with all my heart: do philosophy. It’s your vocation and if you miss it you will deeply regret it later.”) In Paris, he took courses with Martial Guéroult, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, Jean-Toussaint Desanti, Georges Gusdorf, Jean Laporte, and Jean Wahl (he attended Jean Wahl’s course on existence and on Heidegger with Marie Souche-André and Jacques Lacan in the new Collège philosophique). He completed his diplôme d'études supérieures in philosophy on the unity of time in the Presocratics under the direction of Martial Guéroult. These Parisian years—in the course of which he met his future wife, a sévrienne in classics—were naturally years of an intense deepening in his study of philosophy. They also allowed him to deepen his scientific education (in 1947 he studied physics and received a certificate in mineralogy from the faculty of sciences in Paris and a certificate of psychophysiology under the direction of Alfred Fessard) as well as his literary, musical and artistic education (he had a lively interest in surrealism). He also took a great interest in the study of technology, which he considered indispensible. He built many strong and lasting friendships. After receiving the agrégation in 1948, he was appointed to the Lycée Descartes de Tours where he taught philosophy and preparatory courses from 1948 to 1955.

Occupied with the fundamental problems of the history of philosophy (most importantly, the question of the individual and the question of psycho-physical relations) and intent on studying them as thoroughly as possible, he chose a mode of reflection in which philosophy would be capable of being illuminated by science. Such a collaboration between science and philosophy, he wrote to his future advisor in 1954, must not be carried out at the level of results—which would constitute “an invasion of thought by indignant sectarians, as evidenced by the scientistic era”—but at the level of method: “at the level of method, science is in no way the sovereign of a vassal-like philosophy; their relation, rather, is that of the spontaneous to the reflective; the spontaneous only governs the reflective, as in scientism, when the reflecting activity has not been contemporaneous with spontaneous activity.”

Thus, in addition to the licence de Philosophie (an undergraduate degree in philosophy), he also obtained a licence de Psychologie in 1950 and studied psychophysiology, child psychology, social psychology followed by one year of PCB (the first year of medical school) at l'Ecole de Plein Exercice de Médecine in Tours. In 1952, he studied social psychology during three months at the University of Minnesota, and he began participating in Paul Fraisse’s seminar in experimental psychology, for which he prepared a paper on models in psychology

In addition to teaching his primary course in philosophy at the Lycée Descartes in Tours, Simondon taught courses in Greek and Latin as well as a course in twentieth century literature. In 1953, in his philosophy course, he took over for the physics professor, who fell ill.

His teaching of physics was evaluated by the Inspector General Bruhat, who attended a lesson on the conservation of mechanical energy in closed systems and the mutual transformations of potential and kinetic energy: “ […] The teacher, who expressed himself with perfect precision, in a clear and natural language, judiciously chose his examples, delivered everything with helpful precision, emphasized the essential, and clearly concluded the lesson. He spoke of the controversy on the subject of the concept of a living force that erupted between the Cartesian Malebranche and the dynamist Leibniz, and he pointed out an instance in which the two conceptions were compatible, thus presenting the historical and philosophical aspects of his subject. […]” In the creating a workshop for experiments in technology in the school’s basement, which existed from 1953 to 1955, Simondon helped build among other things, a television receptor.

From 1950 to 1963 he taught supplementary courses in Psychology as a lecturer at l’Institut de Touraine, which became the Collège littéraire de Tours, connected to the faculty at Poitiers. He gave lectures at the branch of Stanford University located in Tours, France.

After seven years teaching philosophy at the Lycée de Tours and Psychology at the Collège littéraire, Gilbert Simondon became an assistant professor—and then professor—in the faculty of Letters and Human Science at Poitiers (1955-1963). There he directed certificates in social psychology, general psychology, comparative psychology, and, in 1957, comparative psychophysiology—all the while teaching at the University of Lyon as well. In 1955, he established the laboratory of experimental psychology in the faculty at Poitiers, where, in 1956, he invited his former teacher, Alfred Fessard, for a conference . In 1962, he built the Psychology Laboratory of the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Tours. At Poitiers, he also taught in the Faculty of Law (social psychology) and in the Faculty of Sciences (comparative psychophysiology). Among his colleagues were Jean Pucelle, Jacque d’Hondt, Maurice Mouillaud and Mikel Dufrenne.

Simondon was named Associate Professor at the Sorbonne in 1963. In 1965, he was named Professor (Chair B of Psychology) where he became the colleague of Juliette Favez-Boutonnier (Chair A). Later he would become a professor at Paris University V, where he would direct the course in general psychology and found the Laboratory of General Psychology and Technology (1963-1983), supplemented, in 1970, by the Laboratory in Ethology at Palaiseau. In 1968, he taught agrégation seminars at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, St. Cloud and Fontenay. He also had the opportunity to teach a course on social and industrial psychology for the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Lyon from 1961-1963, and, at the Pedagogy Institute of Lyon, a psychosociology course on technology. He had other teaching posts at universities in Saint-Etienne (1961-1962), Nice (1969), and Lille (1970).

From 1964 to 1970, he participated in the seminar on the history of science and technology directed by Georges Canguilhem at the Rue du Four.

In 1959, he participated in the Institut international de Philosophie’s annual colloquium, which took place in Mysore, India on the theme of “traditional cultural values in the East and West;” the presentation was published in Etudes philosophiques (January 1960). He was an active participant in the sixth Royaumont Colloquium on the concept of information in contemporary science, where he introduced Norbert Wiener in 1962. He took part in a number of other colloquia: the Congress of Home Economics at the International Center of Pedagogical Studies in Sèvre (1950); the Congress of the French Society of Criminology (1951); the Colloquium of the Benedictines at the Arbresle monastery in 1960; two Colloquia on mechanology at the Canadian Cultural Center in 1970 and 1974; he participated in Days of disaster preparedness for the National Office of Road Safety and in the meetings of the Committee on Management for the Center of Disaster Reduction (1971); he also participated in the Colloquium on Technics and Eschatology at Strasbourg (1972); the CNDP’s Colloquium on teaching technology; the Colloquium in Saclay on molecular biology (1974); and the Committee of Studies on the Teaching of Technology at the Physics Laboratory at the Ecole Normal Supérieure, rue d’Ulm (1975).

After having begun work with Gaston Bachelard on polarity in psychology (the inhibition and facilitation of psychic acts), Simondon tried to obtain—without success—a CNRS delegation around 1948, immediately after the agrégation. In order to develop “a more intimate knowledge not only of the results of scientific work, but of the research methods themselves”. He submitted a proposal to “pursue research concerning the influence of consciousness on the body, in particular in the effect called ‘consecutive visual movement’” under the direction of Henri Piéron. Between 1951 and 1954 he participated in Nicholas Popov’s studies on cyclochrony in Piéron’s laboratory at the College de France. He continued his studies in his personal laboratory in Tours (on the premises of a retired shopkeeper on boulevard Thiers, where he had installed, notably, an electrocardiogram) while working on a historical study of Hartley in which “one grasps, in fact, […] this paradigmism which transposes schemata from physics to physiology, taking its inspiration from the hypotheses of Newton” which to him “seemed able to make a not insiginificant contribution to the knowledge of the formation of psychophysiological hypotheses” (Letter to Gaston Bachelard, 1952). Indeed, in 1952, he considered treating, for his complementary thesis, the psychophysiological relation.

Starting in 1952 Simondon began studying the problem of individuation—at the same time as he continued to perfect his knowledge of physics and technics: “I have been working on the notion of individuality since spring. The subject seems to me to be deeply reflexive—thus philosophical” (Letter to Bachelard). This subject, which occupied him for many years, would be the subject of his principal thesis, directed by Jean Hyppolite. On the 19th of April 1958, he defended his thesis in front of a jury composed of Jean Hyppolite, Raymond Aron, Georges Canguilhem, Paul Ricoeur and Paul Fraisse—a defense which was attended, notably, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Wahl, Pierre-Maxime Schuhl and Mikel Dufrenne, with whom Simondon had maintained a deep friendship. Proposing to rethink the individual being from the perspective of individuation rather than individuation from the perspective of the individual, his work developed itself as a reflexive confrontation with the major philosophical conceptions of the individual, notably Aristotle’s, founded on the study of the different levels of individuation. The exam essay, on the central conceptions of the individual, Histoire de la notion d'individu, which should constitute the second main part of his work, was not quite finished; it was published, as a supplement, by Jérôme Millon in 2005.

In January, 1954, Simondon wrote to Hyppolite: “I have chosen the notion of individuality, and, for a year, I have been trying to create a reflexive theory of the criteria for individuality. […] Indeed, it is necessary to grasp being before it is analyzed in terms of the individual and the milieu: the totality individual-milieu is not self-sufficient; one can not explain the individual by the milieu nor the milieu by the individual, and one cannot reduce the one to the other. The individual and the milieu both belong to a phase genetically and logically posterior to a syncretic phase that is constituted by a primary mixture. Here we rediscover an intuition from the Ionian Physiologues, and in particular, Thales.”

The publication of L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information began, partially, in 1964 with L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique, published by PUF in the Epiméthée collection directed by Jean Hyppolite. The work was awarded the Dagnan-Bouveret foundation’s prize by the Institute on the basis of its first part—which was on physical individuation—and the beginning of the second, on individuation in living beings. At the request of Pierre-Maxime Schuhl, Gilles Deleuze wrote an article indicating the importance and interest of the work (before referring to it in his own thesis, Difference and Repetition, in 1968).

Summary of l'Individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information, by Gilbert Simondon.

Our understanding of individuation has been obscured by the potency of the hylomorphic scheme—of technological origin, but containing social implications which keep in it a central zone of darkness. A model of dualist thought insofar as it is relational from the beginning, the hylomorphic scheme must be taken up and defined according to a methodological principle which avoids both dualism and monism by considering individuation as an operation conditioned by a prior system state. This system state—unknown to the Ancients, or rather forgotten after having been sensed by the Ionian Physiologues in the doctrine of phusis—is that of a metastable equilibrium. Metastability differs from stability and instability in that it is rich in potentials and cannot be thought as being completely given in an instant, simultaneous through a relation with itself. A deepened thought of metastability as condition of individuation requires the rejection of the principle of the excluded middle and the logic of identity; the complete being, which is to say, the preindividual being, is more than a unity and more than an identity, it is other than itself. The logic of the excluded middle and of identity is a logic of stable states, able to intervene only after individuation; it does not bear on the complete being, but on an impoverished being, dephased in relation to itself, the individuated being as individual. The only method adequate to individuation is a genetic and analogic process in which the individuation of the thought accompanies that of the being, grasping the being before all splitting (dédoublement), in its active center from which it divides itself (se dédouble).

This method is applied, first of all, to the level of physical individuation, through the study of the genesis of crystalline structures, and then to the investigation of the individuality of the particle, aiming to grasp, from this perspective, the notion of complementarity.

It is then applied at the level of the individuation of living beings, according to the three successive degrees of vital individuation, psychic individuation and collective individuation. Individuation is viewed, on a hypothetical basis, as a quantic operation, the individuated being conserving in itself a charge of preindividual reality which is the foundation for the participation in ulterior individuations under the form of transindividual reality.

The conclusion indicates the epistemological content and attempts to extract the normative consequences of this genetic theory of being.

Complementary Thesis

Gilbert Simondon was attentive early on to the technological and human problems posed by the development of mechanization in the industrial and agricultural worlds with which he had been in contact with (and from which he would draw many examples) while growing up in both Saint-Etienne, a mining and manufacturing city close to Mount Pilat, in the Puy-de-Dôme, and in Haute-Loire). But he was just as sensitive to the conflicts between cultural values and the representations of technology. This concern would mark his complementary thesis, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, defended in 1958 under the direction of Georges Canguilhem and published the same year with Aubier-Montaigne as the first title in the Analyse et Raisons series directed by Martial Guéroult and Jules Vuillemin—as well as a great number of articles and lectures (like Psychosociologie de la technicité). Since his days at the Ecole, he had, on his own, methodically studied technology, writing in 1954, “I have learned the physical sciences and the history of technology; this last effort, though, is by no means complete.” From the very beginning of Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, Simondon views technophobia and technophilia as the two serious excesses of the current age and as two ways of misunderstanding “the burden of alienated human reality which is enclosed in the technical object,” and the task of opening the way to a reflection adequate to technology and its relation to culture.

Summary of Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, by Gilbert Simondon.

While the aesthetic object has been considered suitable material for philosophical reflection, the technical object, treated as an instrument, has only ever been indirectly studied across the multiple modalities of its relation to man as an economic reality, as an instrument of work or, indeed, of consumption.

The nonessential character of knowledge of the technological object with respect to its different relations to man has contributed to masking a task incumbent upon philosophical thought: to rediscover, through a deepening of the relation which exists between nature, man and technical reality, the burden of alienated human reality which is enclosed within the technical object. The technical object, taking the place of the slave and being treated as such across relations of property and custom, has only partially liberated man: the technical object possesses a power of alienation because it is itself in a state of alienation, one more essential than economic and social alienation.

The importance of technical objects in contemporary cultures requires philosophical thought to make the effort of reducing technological alienation by introducing into culture a representation and a scale of values adequate to the essence of technical objects.

The discovery of this essence must be carried out through a study of the genesis of technical objects, achieving itself (s'accomplissant) through a process of concretization which is different from successive empirical corrections and from deduction from prior theoretical principles: there is a specific genesis of the technical object.

A historical study allows for the discovery of the regulative function of culture in the relation between man and the technical object, especially across the normative foundation of the successive manifestations of the encyclopedic spirit, from the technicism of the Sophists up to cybernetic theory, passing through the open and autonomous awareness of the work of Diderot and d’Alembert.

Finally, a study of the contemporary modalities of the relation between man and the technical object shows that the notion of information is the most suitable for accomplishing the integration of culture with a representative and axiological content adequate to technical reality envisaged in its essence, man becoming, after, invention, the active center and actor who alone can bring into existence a coherent technological world.

The publication of his book, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, came at a time when the development of technological problems was, for a good twenty years already, the object of reflection and intense polemic (to mention only French publications: Lucien Febvre, Gina Lombroso, André Siegfried, Pierre-Maxime Schuhl, Alexandre Koyré, Simone Weil, Georges Bernanos, Gabriel Marcel, Georges Friedman, Jean Fourastié, etc. ), but also at a time when a rapprochement between philosophy and science was being put into practice (the Royaumont colloquium on the “fringes” of the notion of information, Le concept d'information dans les sciences contemporaines, brought together philosophers, mathematicians and cyberneticists), and in which, according to Simondon, technological schemata must be integrated into culture in order to counter the forms of alienation which the divorce between culture and technology makes possible. The book was hailed as opening a new direction for philosophy, through its proposal to shift the balance of general culture by introducing the technical object into culture (see Jean Lacroix’s article in le Monde, 24 February 1959). Jean Baudrillard refers to it; Herbert Marcuse praises its denunciation of technocracy. In 1957, the launch of the first orbital rocket gave evidence that technology, as a veritable dimension of the human world, could no longer be erroneously reduced to the category of instrumentality. CNRS awarded him a bronze medal, in September 1958, for this work.

During the rest of his career, Simondon actively pursued his research and gave numerous courses on concepts whose analysis was in continuity with his early work. His experimental work, primarily on perception, has for the most part already been published (see the bibliography of articles and courses). But whether it was perception imagination, memory, communication, invention (or the resolution of problems), one could say that his analyses were based on his early conceptions of individuation and technics, that they enriched these early concepts or, in a way, illustrated them in showing their productivity primarily in relation to what one could call a psycho-physiological relationship which is always under investigation not only across the study of the totality of living beings, but in relation to the technological schemata linked to the notion of information (relays, modulation, amplification, etc.) as well. He enriched and developed the analyses of Mode d'existence des objets techniques, too, in his studies in technological invention. The activities of the Laboratory of General Psychology on the Rue Serpente (room 208) were characterized by Gilbert Simondon in the conclusion to a 1972 activity report (the year in which studies on prolonged perception were conducted): “Since its foundation, the Laboratory has been particularly dedicated to implicit information, in relation to the relations between acting beings, and in which the messages are the changes of state of certain elements inside an organization, rather than unidirectional exchanges initially indicating, a source, encoder, transmitter and channel. Currently, it strives to define the mode of action of this implicit information in human and animal behavior, step by step, in all of the developmental acts or modes of action which suppose sequencing. This domain extends from perception to the study of personality, passing through the different kinds of deductive technology.” This term, technology, implied in the name of the Laboratory (Laboratory of General Psychology and Technology), is defined in the same report, from a 1972 seminar presentation in general psychology entitled Technology and Psychology: “[…] this subject had been offered up for the reflection to the members of the seminar in order to attempt to disengage a logic of technology which is neither an empirical technics nor a science, but a knowledge of functional relationships whether habitual or accidental. […] The first two meetings of the seminar were dedicated to deductive technology with regard to security in multiple domains, and to the concepts or models one could draw from it.” The studies in animal behavior were further developed in the Palaiseau annex of the Laboratory. In the list Gilbert Simondon himself drew up in 1980 of his principal researches, he cites: --Pedagogy and the Teaching of Technics --Theoretical and Applied Technics --Imagination and Invention --Creativity --Studies in Instinct and Ethology --Studies in Learning in Inferior Animals –Retrial of Bramstedt’s experiments in learning in Paramecia (participation of students from ENS, Rue d’Ulm) –Studies in ecology and Presentations at the seminar in the social psychology laboratory for the UER in psychology –Study of the problems posed by the introduction of contemporary technology in developing countries –Comparative history of technics, the role of hermeticism –Study of the resolution of problems –Studies on perception, limits of perceptual constancy and optico-geometrical illusions –Studies on effects of consecutive and simultaneous blindness –Studies in long-term perception (la perception de longue) in visual and auditory systems, satiation effect –Study of consecutive effects (consecutive visual movement) –Study of auto-kinetic movement with photographic recording of the dilation of the pupil.

The last completed and written course at the University—and before his serious health problems—in 1976-77, was on perception. In the years that remained, until 1983 his teaching was essentially on psychology and the philosophy of science and of technology.

Despite the originality of his thought, the recognition of his works, his early nomination to the Sorbonne, the numerous activities and responsibilities inside and outside the University system (agrégation, IPES, directing numerous research projects) made Gilbert Simondon a widely known figure in the philosophical world—as witnessed by his presence in anthologies, scholarly books, as well as his concrete philosophical teaching and courses given in France. Citations of his work can be found in studies of every genre; He was asked to speak abroad on many occasions, primarily concerning the question of technology. He was also frequently solicited by teams working on technology, design, and even risk prevention. In the 80s, his writings began to influence how technology was taught in junior high and high school, as well as the manner in which elementary schools were introduced to the study of the computer sciences.

In the field of the philosophy of technology, the reputation and influence of Simondon’s thought has not really been eclipsed since the reception of Mode d'existence des objets techniques. The ontological dimension of his work on individuation established itself slowly, and with the attention given to it by Gilles Deleuze it became more well known, especially abroad.

Gilbert Simondon attached great importance to the complete publication of his study on individuation, and this project occupied him in the last months of his life despite his health problems. In early 1989, with the help of his son Michel, he published the last part of l'Individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information, which had been cut from the first edition published in 1964 by PUF. It was under the care of François Laruelle and his collection at Aubier that L'Individuation psychique et collective was finally published. The publication of this work would clearly contribute to a renewal of interest in his work for readers of philosophy even if l'Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (the first part of the study on individuation) still remained a point of reference for those in other fields, most notably for biologists. Finally, in 2005, both parts of his masterwork were published together in a single volume as, L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information by Jérôme Millon.

Shortly after his death, a special edition of Cahiers Philosophiques, edited by Marie André, Jean-Louis Poirier and Jean-Yves Chateau, was dedicated to his work (No. 43), leading to a Colloquium organized by the Collègue International de Philosophie. The proceedings of this colloquium were published in 1994 under the title Gilbert Simondon, Une pensée de l’individuation et de la technique with Albin Michel (Bibliothèque du Collège International de Philosophie). Around 1992 Gilles Châtelet dedicated an article to Simondon in l'Encyclopaedia universalis, as did P. Hocquard and J. Herman in l'Encyclopédie philosophique Universelle and Jean-Yves Chateau in Philosophes et philosophie de Morichère (Nathan), etc. In Libération, Jean-Baptiste Mariongiu dedicated the piece Simondon et la machine en marche. Young researchers continue to rediscover the importance, novelty, and notoriety that Gilbert Simondon and his work has garnered over the past 40 years.

Only the two theses were published during Simondon’s life. Several important courses have already appeared with Seuil, Transparence and Ellipses (L'invention et le développement des techniques, la Perception, Imagination et invention, la Communication, l'Instinct, Perception et modulation, Attitudes et motivations, L'animal et l'homme, see the bibliography). Others are still being prepared for publication (Presses Universitaires de France).

©Simondon