Issue #34 September 2020

Gilbert Simondon and the Process of Individuation

by Matt Bluemink

To think the question of individuality is to take a step back

through the history of philosophy. Throughout every
philosophical epoch, thinkers have been concerned with the
nature of the individual; they have grappled with the question of
how objects, sometimes consisting of many autonomous parts,
can be described as singular, individual entities, rather than
pluralities. In the mid-twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze began
his review of Gilbert Simondon’s L’individu et sa genèse
physico-biologique by stating that “The principle of
individuation is by all accounts a respectable, even venerable
notion. Until quite recently, however, it seems modern
philosophy has been wary of adopting the problem as its own”
(Deleuze, 2004, 86). Although there are many philosophers who
have tackled the problem, Deleuze claims that since the
enlightenment the question of individuation in science and
philosophy had become two separate questions: “The accepted
wisdom of physics, biology, and psychology has led thinkers to
attenuate the principle, but not to reinterpret it” (ibid.).
Scholars of Aristotle and Duns Scotus have debated the
necessity of a principle of individuation, the German Idealists
had sought the individual in relation to totality, and the
existentialists had linked it to authenticity; but only recently, at
the time of Deleuze’s writing, had a full-fledged philosophy
been conceived that utilises modern scientific knowledge
(including recent developments in the understanding of
quantum mechanics and thermodynamics) to help to reinterpret
the ancient philosophical problem — the philosophy of Gilbert
Simondon. As Deleuze continues: “Gilbert Simondon makes no
small display of intellectual power with a profoundly original
theory of individuation implying a whole philosophy” (ibid.). In
honour of the forthcoming and long awaited English translation
of Simondon’s magnum opus, Individuation in Light of Notions
of Form and Information, it will be the purpose of this essay to
lay out the foundations of Simondon’s philosophy of
individuation within the context of the philosophical tradition,
and to introduce the ideas that would have a profound effect on
Deleuze’s philosophy of difference and Bernard Stiegler’s
politics of individuation.

The Preindividual
In order to conceptualise individuation in such a way as to
separate himself from substantialism, hylomorphism, and
Hegelian idealism, Simondon introduces a new concept which
serves as the grounding and the source of all individuals. This
he calls ‘preindividual being’. Simondon wants to claim that
any substantial being that exists in reality has already undergone
(or is already undergoing) a process of individuation through
which the singular individual is formed. The predicates of unity
and identity that are necessary for the existence of an
individuated being therefore only exist as a consequence of the
process of ontogenesis. Thus, in order to conceptualise a phase
of being that exists ontologically prior to individuated being we
must exclude unity and identity from its determining
characteristics. Both unity and identity are predicative
characteristics that exist only as a result of the process of
individuation: “Unity and identity only apply to one of the
phases of being, posterior to the operation of individuation …
they do not apply to ontogenesis understood in its fullest sense,
that is to say, the becoming of being as a being that divides and
dephases itself by individuating itself” (PPO, 6).
In Simondon’s thought, to conceptualise being qua being we
must separate it from its historical determinations as primary
individual. Preindividual being must therefore be understood in
opposition to individuated being. If individuated being is
understood as singular, or as one, then preindividual being is
not one, but more-than-one. Preindividual being is therefore
non-identical with itself. However, it is not merely the constant
shift from one identity to another through the negation of the
previous identity as we see in Hegel. The preindividual exists as
a realm of potentialities which contains within it the possibility
for potential individuations, a realm that Deleuze, following
Bergson, will term ‘the virtual.’ However, what is of
paramount importance here is that the preindividual is not used
up or irrevocably transformed when the process of individuation
occurs. Within the individual there is always an ‘overflow’ of
preindividual being that can be thought of as the source for any
future transformations in its constitution. The individual must
still retain some of its preindividual potentiality in order to
actualise itself as part of the series of individuation processes
(physical, biological, psychic, collective) which determine its
nature: “The individual would then be grasped as a relative
reality, a certain phase of being that supposes a preindividual
reality, and that, even after individuation, does not exist on its
own, because individuation does not exhaust with one stroke the
potentials of preindividual reality” (ibid., 5).
Building on this idea, Alberto Toscano identifies that the
existence of a preindividual reality constitutes the beginning of
a reality of relations that can be seen as the cornerstone of
Simondon’s project and will serve as a direct influence on
Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: “This preindividual
relationality … is nevertheless also a sort of non-relation:
heterogeneity as the anoriginary qualification of being. Being is
thus said to be more-than-one to the extent that all of its
potentials cannot be actualized at once” (Toscano, 2006, 138).
In other words, although preindividual being is yet to be
individuated, and therefore exists only as a multiplicity of
potentials, it can still be regarded as affected by an inherent
relationality within itself. Similarly, the individuated being
exists in a constant relation with the preindividual potential
within itself. Thus, process and relationality take the place of
principle and identity as the primary qualifications of the
becoming of being.
Here Simondon’s idea of the relational formulation of the
individual draws parallels with Kierkgaard’s conception of ‘the
self’ in The Sickness Unto Death as “a relation that relates itself
to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation”
(Kierkegaard, 2004, 13). This rather convoluted definition of
the self as a reflexive relation can be unpacked when
considering how the self can be distinguished from a human
being. Kierkegaard makes this distinction by arguing that a
human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite; it is the
relation of a finite being to the infinite world it exists in.
However, he claims that a human being is not synonymous with
the self, the self is not merely the relation between two factors
but is a relation which relates to itself. Thus, a human being, as
a “synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the
eternal, of freedom and necessity” (ibid.) has the potential to
relate itself to itself, and before this relation, a human being
cannot be considered a ‘self’ in the Kierkegaardian sense.
Indeed, it is the freedom of choice that the individual has as a
finite being in an infinite universe which gives him the
possibility for self-creation and individuation. In the same way,
Simondon argues that the individual is only individual in
relation to the multiplicity of preindividual potentialities that
exist within it.
However, although there are parallels between the two,
Simondon’s project is of a fundamentally different nature to
Kierkegaard’s. Kierkegaard pictures individuation as the self-
realisation of an independently acting subject carried out in
isolation and freedom; he is concerned above all with the
existential question of freedom from the perspective of the self-
conscious human being. Simondon, on the other hand, wants to
start his investigation in the non-human world and subsequently
work towards the human. He places a large emphasis on the
ability of contemporary science to provide analogous examples
for how even the most fundamental metaphysical problems can
be reinterpreted in such a way that would have been impossible
prior to the twentieth century. He believes that preindividual
being could only have been understood in the way he describes
if we take into account what were, at the time, recent
developments in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. For
example, the discovery of quantum states as probabilistic fields
which are actualised upon observation informs his idea of the
preindividual: “quantum theory grasps this regime of the
preindividual that goes beyond unity: an exchange of energy
occurs through elementary quantities, as if there were an
individuation of energy in the relation between the particles,
which can be considered in a sense to be physical individuals”
(PPO, 6). He also directly draws on two concepts from
thermodynamics to serve as analogies that further exemplify
this idea. The first is the notion of ‘dephasing’ and the second is
the ‘metastable equilibrium’. Let us first consider ‘dephasing’.
Dephasing and the Metastable
Equilibrium
In physics, a phase transition occurs when one state of
equilibrium shifts to another (i.e. from water to ice). However,
to Simondon preindividual being exists without a phase. So, in
its most basic sense, ‘dephasing’ can be understood as a term
which is used to indicate a change in the state of a system, or
the becoming of phases within a system. To understand how
this term is used, we must first note that, to Simondon:
“Pre-individual being is being in which there is no phase; the
being in which individuation occurs is that in which a resolution
appears through the division of being into phases. This division
of being into phases is becoming. … Individuation corresponds
to the appearance of phases in being that are the phases of
being.” (PPO, 6)
In other words, we must understand that individuated beings
come to exist in phases, but as preindividual being is necessarily
not individuated, it exists without a single phase — it is pre-
phased in the same way that it is more-than-one: as a
multiplicity of potentialities that can become actualities. In
order for these potentialities to become actual, preindividual
being must divide into phases, or dephase itself: “every
operation, and every relation within an operation, [is] an
individuation that divides, or dephases, the preindividual being”
(ibid.). Therefore, as individuation happens in phases, and
preindividual being is necessarily not individuated, dephasing
describes how preindividual being becomes individual, whilst
still retaining within itself an overflow of preindividual
potentialities which can serve as the basis for future
individuations. Here we can see that dephasing is a necessary
way of conceptualising the operation of becoming from a
preindividual reality; it is the origin of a problematic through
which ontogenesis occurs, and through which preindividual
being can be individuated into various substantial realities and
the networks of which they are a part.
Similarly, the idea of ‘metastability’ within being plays a
foundational role in all of Simondon’s subsequent
determinations about the nature of individuation. To Simondon,
one of the major mischaracterisations of individuation
throughout the history of philosophy has been due to the fact
that until recently the notion of a metastable equilibrium was
not known. He claims that in antiquity, for example, there were
only the presupposed notions of instability and stability, or
movement and rest, but nothing that existed in between or
beyond these concepts. Thus, to consider being was to consider
an implicit state of stability. However, through the development
of physics have we become aware of the notion of metastability,
and therefore it is this development that has given us a new
paradigm through which to understand the true nature of
individuation.
In its most basic formulation, metastability refers to a state that
transcends the classical distinction between stability and
instability. Deleuze summarises that “what essentially defines a
metastable system is the existence of a ‘disparation,’ the
existence of at least two different dimensions, two disparate
levels of reality, between which there is not yet any interactive
communication” (DI, 89). In other words, a system is meta-
stable in that it is not truly stable yet not entirely unstable; it
only requires the smallest amount of energy in order change
from one state to another. A common physical example of an
object in a metastable state is a bowling pin. If the standing pin
is pushed slightly it may wobble and fall back into place. If it is
pushed with a little more force it may wobble and then fall to
the ground. During the pin’s wobbling it is neither stable nor
unstable, thus we can say that it exists in a state of metastability.
Metastability also plays a key role in our understanding of
energy transfer between quantum particles. Simondon uses this
state as an analogy for being that is considered as more-than-
one in that it is charged with potentials for a becoming that
takes place through individuation. In other words, preindividual
being exists in a state of metastability which means that certain
forces determine how it becomes individuated in particular
ways, and therefore, without metastability as an analogy we
cannot move beyond the metaphysics of antiquity. The
necessity of the metastable equilibrium will be shown in
Simondon’s distinction between the different stages of
individuation (physical, biological, psychic, collective).

Physical Individuation and

Transduction
To start this investigation, Simondon wants to first present how
physical objects are created through individuation in this
metastable environment — this he calls ‘physical
individuation.’ He seeks to present “physical individuation as a
case of the resolution of a metastable system, starting from a
system state like that of supercooling or supersaturation, which
governs the genesis of crystals” (PPO, 6). In other words, he
wants to use the genesis of crystals as both an example of
physical individuation, and as an analogy to understand how
individuated systems form as a resolution of the problematic
between different potentialities within being. This example is
summarised well by Muriel Combes:
“A physical system is said to be in metastable equilibrium (or
false equilibrium) when the least modification of system
parameters (pressure, temperature, etc.) suffices to break its
equilibrium. Thus, in super-cooled water (i.e., water remaining
liquid at a temperature below its freezing point), the least
impurity with a structure isomorphic to that of ice plays the role
of a seed for crystallization and suffices to turn the water to ice.
Before all individuation, being can be understood as a system
containing potential energy. Although this energy becomes
active within the system, it is called potential because it requires
a transformation of the system in order to be structured, that is,
to be actualized in accordance with structures. Preindividual
being, and indeed any system in a metastable state, habors
potentials that are incompatible because they belong to
heterogeneous dimensions of being” (Combes, 2012, 3–4).
There are two important implications made in this example. The
first is that the super-cooled water in a liquid state exists in
metastable equilibrium; it exists as liquid despite meeting the
majority of conditions (in this case temperature) to change its
state into a solid. In other words, the fact that the liquid is in a
super-cooled state means it is filled with the potentiality to
become a solid, but if there is no ‘crystal seed’ around which a
crystal structure can form it will persist as a liquid.22
Recent studies have shown that pure water can be super cooled to −48.3 °C
without being changed into ice (Moore & Molinero, 2011).

Without a crystal seed introduced into the solution (i.e. a

crystal dissolved in water or a piece of dust that disrupts the
uniformity of the solution) a change in pressure is necessary in
order for the molecules to self-organise into a crystal lattice (i.e.
hitting a bottle of a super-cooled water). So, just as any small
amount of pressure would determine whether the bowling pin
stood or fell, here any small change in the environmental
conditions of the supercooled liquid will determine the nature of
its phase as a solid or a liquid. Simondon argues that
preindividual being operates in a similar way: “One can also
suppose that reality, in itself, is primitively like the
supersaturated solution and even more completely so in the
preindividual regime” (PPO, 6). It is the operation enacted upon
the preindividual that determines the nature and the result of its
individuation. The second implication can only be understood
through the introduction of one final term from Simondon’s
dense vocabulary. The notion of ‘transduction’.
Simondon adopts the concept of transduction, a term that was,
at the time of Simondon’s writing, familiar to biologists and
psychologists, and gives it a new meaning.33
In the work of Jean Piaget, transduction refers to a mental operation that
differs from deductive or inductive reasoning. However, Simondon takes the
initial premises of this definition and carries them further than Piaget would
have intended. In recent years transduction has also been used in the realm
of machine learning.

To Simondon, transduction refers to the operative nature of

individuation, or how individuation operates. As Simon Mills
describes: “It is on the metastable, pre-individual foundation
that the concept of transduction is developed as the axiomatic
and ontogenetic account of how form arises” (Mills, 2016, 37–
38). In other words, against the Aristotelian notion of
hylomorphism, and the Hegelian dialectic, transduction serves
as the process by which individuated forms of being arise. As
he states: “By transduction we mean an operation — physical,
biological, mental, social44
The transductive process occurs across each different regime of
individuation, but for the purposes of this chapter we will focus on the
physical and biological which are described in L’individu et sa genèse
physico-biologique.

— by which an activity propagates itself from one element to

the next, within a given domain, and founds this propagation on
a structuration of the domain that is realized from place to
place” (PPO, 11). So, it is neither form being applied to matter,
nor matter becoming a certain form, but a process that creates
form through a propagation of structure that actualises the
preindividual potentiality within the being. To understand how
transduction operates let us continue with the example of the
formation of crystals which to Simondon represents the most
paradigmatic form of physical individuation:
“A crystal that, from a very small seed, grows and expands in
all directions in its supersaturated mother liquid provides the
most simple image of the transductive operation: each already
constituted molecular layer serves as an organizing basis for the
layer currently being formed. The result is an amplifying
reticular structure. The transductive operation is an
individuation in progress” (Ibid.)
In other words, as the crystal forms, the ‘outside’, or outer layer,
of the crystal serves as the basis for the constitution of the rest
of the crystal structure; the internal structure of the crystal is a
result of the activity that occurs at the limit between the interior
domain and the exterior domain (this will be different for the
living being as we shall see). Each new layer in the crystal
structure actualises the potential of the metastable, preindividual
potentiality within the solution surrounding the crystal seed.
The interaction between the outer limit of the crystal and the
outer limit of the solution is where the transductive operation
takes place, and thus where individuation occurs. To Simondon,
this is not particular to crystals but is an axiomatic property of
reality in general. It is the operation for the creation of a ground
that does not presuppose a prior substantive reality but still
“establishes new dimensions and structures that are themselves
fresh grounds for further operations of individuation” (Mills,
2016, 38).
Furthermore, through the example of crystallisation, we see that
a metastable environment is defined by the existence of a
‘disparation’. In its becoming through dephasing, preindividual
being gives birth to an individual which mediates two ‘orders of
magnitude’, or different scales (e.g. micro and macro, or
molecular and molar) that are not only in communication, but
also create a milieu that exists at the same level of being as
itself:
“that which the individuation makes appear is not only the
individual, but also the pair individual-environment. The
individual is thus relative in two senses, both because it is not
all of the being, and because it is the result of a state of the
being in which it existed neither as individual, nor as principle
of individuation.” (PPO, 5)
This idea of a co-individuation between the individual and the
milieu in which it exists is perhaps one of the most important
ideas in Simondon’s philosophy. No individual can exist
without the milieu of which it is a part; a milieu that arises at
the same time as the individual from the process of
individuation. Thus, we start to see a concrete example of how
an individual should only be seen as a partial result of the
transductive operation or process that brings it into being; it is
not the beings which are formed that are primary, but the
process of individuation itself. However, to conclude our
chapter on Simondon’s theory of physical and biological
individuation we must examine how this transductive process of
individuation applies to the creation of living organisms, and
thus sets the stage for the development of the human being and
its psychic and collective processes.
Biological Individuation
Biological individuation, vital individuation, or individuation of
the living being, is the process through which life comes into
being and perpetuates itself. Simondon claims that in the
domain of the living, the idea of metastability can be used to
characterise individuation, however, it no longer occurs in such
an instantaneous manner as we have seen in the formation of the
crystal. Biological individuation still creates an individual-
environment pair, “but it is accompanied by a perpetuated
individuation, which is life itself, according to the fundamental
mode of becoming: the living conserves within itself a
permanent activity of individuation” (ibid., 7). In other words,
the living individual is not just the result of individuation as is
the case in the crystal, but is what he calls ‘a theatre of
individuation’ because “not all of the activity of the living is
concentrated at its limit, such as with the physical individual”
(ibid.). Now, what does Simondon mean here? He is referring to
the differences in the dichotomy between interiority and
exteriority within the realm of the physical individual and the
biological individual. He claims that within the interior realm of
the living individual there is a “more complete regime
of internal resonance, one that requires permanent
communication and that maintains a metastability that is a
condition of life” (ibid.). Internal resonance can be thought of as
the source of potential future individuations. Whereas the
internal resonance of the physical individual is characterised by
the limit of the individual as it becomes in its environment (as
we saw in the metastable equilibrium that is formed through the
propagation of a crystal’s structure at its outer layer), the
internal resonance of the living individual exists inside the
living being, as well as at its outer layer:
“The internal structure of the organism is not only the result (as
with a crystal) of the activity that occurs and of the modulation
that occurs at the limit between the interiority domain and the
exteriority domain. The physical individual … active at the
limit of its domain, does not have a veritable interiority; the
living individual, on the contrary, does have a veritable
interiority because individuation carries itself out within the
individual” (ibid., 7–8.).
What this means is that individuation in the realm of the living
is carried out within the individual itself. The biological
individual is defined by its outer limit and by its internal
processes that are constantly adapting both to its environment
and to the internality within itself. To exemplify this distinction,
we might imagine how the formation of a crystal differs from
the growth of a plant. In order for a crystal to propagate its
structure it only needs a particular molecular formation to serve
as the basis for crystallisation. On the other hand, a plant must
operate by absorbing water and nutrients and from the soil,
carbon dioxide from the air, and photosynthesising light into
chemical energy, all of which are converting one form of energy
from the outside and utilising it in an internal process that is
necessary for the continual individuation of the plant; an
individuation that, as Simondon states, constitutes life itself. 55
This is also what differentiates biological individuation from technical
individuation: “This is not the sole characteristic of the living, and the living
cannot be reduced to an automaton that maintains a certain number of
equilibriums or that searches for compatibilities between different exigencies,
according to a complex equilibrium formula composed of simpler
equilibriums; the living is also the being that is the result of an initial
individuation and that amplifies this individuation — an activity not undertaken
by the technical object, to which cybernetics would otherwise compare the
living, in terms of its function” (PPO, 7). The particular aspects of technical
individuation are explored in detail in On the Mode of Existence of Technical
Objects (2016).

The individuation process of a plant thus provides a perfect

example of how the individuation process in general constitutes
what Deleuze defines as a ‘disparation,’ or “the existence of at
least two different dimensions, two disparate levels of reality”
(DI, 89); the plant establishes “communication between a
cosmic order (that to which the energy of light belongs) and an
inframolecular order (that of mineral salts, oxygen, etc.)”
(Combes, 2012, 4). However, the individuation of a plant gives
birth to more than just the plant in question. It gives birth to the
individual as a mediation between these two ‘disparate levels of
reality’ (or orders of magnitude in Simondon’s terms) and to the
milieu that exists at the same level of reality as itself. Just as the
solution surrounding the crystal is its milieu, the soil or air is the
milieu of the plant. The milieu, seen as the external
environment through which the individual individuates itself,
arises simultaneously with the individual. The plant mediates
those two orders (cosmic and chemical), but the soil around it is
now of the same magnitude as itself. Thus, the milieu isn’t one
specific magnitude or another, but is determined by the
individual as its complement.
What is important in this example is that it shows the
individual as relation. It shows how the individual can only be
seen as a partial result of the process that brings it into being.
The process is never exhausted in the creation of the individual
because of the virtual field of preindividual being that exists in
metastable equilibrium within the being itself. Thus, as Combes
summarises, “we may consider individuals as beings that come
into existence as so many partial solutions to so many problems
of incompatibility between separate levels of being” (ibid. 4).

Conclusion
The purpose of this essay has been to illuminate some of the
key concepts in the work of Simondon that will prove
influential for later philosophers such as Bernard Stiegler, Gilles
Deleuze, and Bruno Latour. As Deleuze states: “The new
concepts established by Simondon seem to me extremely
important; their wealth and originality are striking, when they’re
not outright inspiring” (DI, 86). Although Simondon’s work on
technics has recently garnered more attention in the English-
speaking world, the lack of a translation of his primary thesis on
individuation has limited him to being referred to as a ‘thinker
of technics.’ However, Simondon’s work, originally completed
in 1958, was vastly ahead of its time in its application of various
interdisciplinary fields such as quantum mechanics, cybernetics,
evolutionary biology, minerology, aesthetics and many more.
My hope is that, with the publication of Individuation in Light
of the Notions of Form and Information, we will start to see his
recognition as an important thinker in his own right.
Matt is a philosopher and writer from London. His main interests are the
connections between philosophy, literature, technology and culture. He is
based in Isidora, IC and has a burgeoning interest in the concept of cities and
urbanism. He is the founder and editor of bluelabyrinths.com.

Works Cited

Combes, M. (2013) Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the

Transindividual. Trans. T. LaMarre. Cambridge: MIT Press.
De Boever, A. et. al. (2012) Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology.
Edinburgh: EUP.

Deleuze, G. (2004) Desert Islands and Other Texts. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kierkegaard, S. (2004) The Sickness unto Death. Trans. A. Hannay. London:

Penguin.

Mills, S. (2016) Gilbert Simondon: Information, Technology and Media.

London: Roman & Littlefield.

Moore, E. B. and Molinero, V. (2011) ‘Structural Transformation in

Supercooled Water Controls the Crystallization Rate of Ice’. Nature. Vol 479.
pp. 506–508.

Simondon, G. (2009) ‘The Position of the Problem of

Ontogenesis’, Parrhesia, Vol. 7(1), pp. 4–16.

Simondon, G. (2016) On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Trans.

C. Malaspina and J. Rogrove. Minneapolis: Univocal.

Toscano, A. (2006) The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation

Between Kant and Deleuze. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.