On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects

by Gilbert Simondon, Cecile Malaspina (Translator), John Rogove (Translator)

Overview

Few thinkers have been as influential upon current discussions and theoretical practices in the age of media archaeology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities as the French thinker Gilbert Simondon. Simondon’s prolific intellectual curiosity led his philosophical and scientific reflections to traverse a variety of areas of research, including philosophy, psychology, the beginnings of cybernetics, and the foundations of religion. For Simondon, the human/machine distinction is perhaps not a simple dichotomy. There is much we can learn from our technical objects, and while it has been said that humans have an alienating rapport with technical objects, Simondon takes up the task of a true thinker who sees the potential for humanity to uncover life-affirming modes of technical objects whereby we can discover potentiality for novel, healthful, and dis-alienating rapports with them. For Simondon, by way of studying its genesis, one must grant to the technical object the same ontological status as that of the aesthetic object or even a living being. His work thus opens up exciting new entry points into studying the human’s rapport with its continually changing technical reality. This first complete English-language translation of Gilbert Simondon’s groundbreaking and influential work finally presents to Anglophone readers one of the pinnacle works of France’s most unique thinkers of technics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517904876
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	04/18/2017
Series:	Univocal
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was a French philosopher of technology whose work continues to attract new interest within a variety of academic fields.

Table of Contents

Note ix

Prospectus xv

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects

Introduction 15

Part I Genesis and Evolution of Technical Objects

Chapter 1 Genesis of the technical object: the process of concretization

I The abstract technical object and the concrete technical object 25

II Conditions of technical evolution 29

III The rhythm of technical progress; continuous and minor improvements; discontinuous and major improvements 40

IV Absolute origins of the technical lineage 44

Chapter 2 Evolution of technical reality; element, individual, ensemble

I Hypertely and self-conditioning in technical evolution 53

II Technical invention: ground and form in the living and in inventive thought 59

III Technical individualization 63

IV Evolutionary succession and preservation of technicity Law of relaxation 67

V Technicity and evolution of technics: technicity as instrument of technical evolution 71

Illustrations 83

Part II Man and the Technical Object

Chapter 1 The two fundamental modes of relation between man and the technical given

I Social majority and minority of technics 103

II Technics learned by the child and technics thought by the adult 106

III The common nature of minor technics and major technics. The signification of encyclopedism 111

IV Necessity of a synthesis between the major and minor modes of access to technics in the domain of education 121

Chapter 2 The regulative function of culture in the relation between man and the world of technical objects. Current problems

I The different modalities of the notion of progress 129

II Critique of the relation between man and the technical object as it is presented by the notion of progress arising from thermodynamics and energetics, Recourse to Information Theory 135

III Limits of the technological notion of information in order to account for the relation between man and the technical object. The margin of indeterminacy in technical individuals. Automatism 147

IV Philosophical thought must carry out the integration of technical reality into universal culture, by founding a technology 159

Part III The Essence of Technicity

Chapter 1 The genesis of technicity

I The notion of a phase applied to coming-into-being: technicity as a phase 173

II The phase-shift from the primitive magical unity 176

III The divergence of technical thought and of religious thought 183

Chapter 2 Relations between technical thought and other species of thought

I Technical thought and aesthetic thought 191

II Technical thought, theoretical thought, practical thought 211

Chapter 3 Technical and philosophical thought 223

Conclusion 247

Glossary of Technical Terms 261

Bibliography 267