Summary of Interview of Gilbert Simondon by Jean Lemoyne

7/27/2019 Summary of Interview of Gilbert Simondon by Jean Lemoyne

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Q: How did you go from your concern with the problem of individuation to the study of

mechanology, of the technical object as such?

S: There is an element of chance. But there is in fact a real relation, as a technical object

constitutes itself as a unity, a solid unity. It is an intermediary between the world and

man, perhaps also between two technical objects. The first phase of its development is a

phase of the constitution of its unity, a phase of the constitution of its solidity. What is

essential in a tool? It is a relation between the body of its operator and the thing it acts

upon. Let’s take the mosr elementary example, given by Leroi-Gourhan (of a handheld

implement such as an axe or a hammer). To be a good tool it must have a firmly fit

handle (or haft), it must be well constituted (example of a fit by collar, socket, snap etc).

There are several solutions appropriate to different types of wood used, but each isrational if we bear in mind the two constituents of metal head and wooden handle., and

the function of the tool – to establish a constant and non-fallacious relation between the

body of the operator and the object he acts on. There is an individuality, but it is an

internally consistent individuality of the object itself, of the tool.

Q: Let’s go on to the machine. The same principle of individuation can be found, but

dialectised.

S: Yes, the almost necessary beginning point is the resolution of a problem by the

appearance of an intermediary, which is often a new machine part. The wheelfor

example is a new part, perhaps beginning as a roll or log, but intervening essentially

when it has an axle, when it is fixed in relation to a chassis while still rolling on the

ground. For this intermediary to be viable, it must be solid, a single block. It must be

assembled, and the technique of assembling is the artisanal technique of solidity, making

a single block out of several. This is the first phase, that of individuation and stability: a

wheel must bea wheel, one object and not several.

Q: Does the same principle apply no matter what the complexity of the technical object

e.g. to a complexly constituted machine?



S: For a machine to exist, it must first be viable – non-auto-destructive, the site of

exchanges that make it stable. imagine a lamp that would catch fire, it would not be

stable, not viable because self-destructive. Unity of functioning, stability of functioning,

internal coherence are the condition of existence of any technical object, and any

machine. Example: the first Diesel motor was self-destructive since it exploded, the

second motor was better constituted and didn’t. The difference being in the moment of

introduction of fuel into the air before compression in the first case, and after

compression in the second.

Q: This establishes the relation between mechanology and your principles of

individuation.

S: Yes, in a simplified form. Later, to make a higher level of complexity, technical objects

usually need circuits of information, that are not just implicit but associated. example: an

oil lamp where the more it heats up, the more it aspires air which cools it down. This is

an example of implicit information, permitting the homeostasis and stability of the

object. More complex machines make an explicit use of information, separated out as

such e.g. servo-mechanisms.

Q: Influences, such as Reueaux and other mechanologists?

S: Yes, a little. But I developped the mechanological taste (which relates the most

perfected industry or best equipped science to the purest, unsullied by humans, nature)

via the novels of Jules Verne, rather than via the specialists in mechanology. The fact of

a convergence is a good thing.

Q: Where do you situate yourself in the mechanological movement and in what direction

do you want to take it?

S: I want to go towards something culturel. A cold objective study is necessary, but I

want further to awaken my contemporaries culturally to the different historical stages

and layers of a technical civilisation, because I hear a lot of vulgarity which discourages



me. The technical object is held responsible for all our ills: for a soulless technological

civilisation, or for the society of consumption, and is held responsible for today’s

disasters and the troubles of life. Our civilisation is in fact not very technical, and when it

is, it sometimes is so badly. Our civilisation is not too technological, but rather badly

technological. In each epoch users put pressure on producers to present objects with the

allure and the external characteristics of those of the previous generations. One could

call it cultural hysteresis, or cultural lag.

The first characteristic of a technical object when it is constituted is to be a unity. A good

wheel is indivisible at the beginning. It is not made so that one part can survive longer

than the rest. But that is just the first phase. Technical progress, on the other hand,

consists in the object dividing and dichotomising: one part is adapted to the outside world, and one part to the user. At this stage, one part perpetuates itself, the other

wears itself out or is meant to be labile. If you treat an object in the dichotomised phase

like an object where everthing wears out at once and must be discarded, you are

committing a fundamental cultural error e.g. changing your car as soon as it is out of

fashion. The error is when the object is not known in terms of its its essential lines,

principally its temporal evolutive lines, not known as it should be by its users. So the

producers wrap it in an appearance which camouflages its essential reality.

The third phase of the technical object is the appearance of the networked object i.e. a

relatively simplified object. Now it must be economically easy to buy and easy to

maintain., as it must be pluralised. It must be relativelt segmentarised, each part of the

object being standardly exchangeable for another when a defect develops. Whereas the

dichotomised object required a highly qualified artisan to repair it. So there is an

evolution of the technical object which requires that the cultural realities must be as

contemporary as possible to the true nature of the object. If they represent what the

object was 20 years ago, they will lead to conspicuous consumption or a wrong attitude

and finally to disapppointment. Then we blame the technological object for all that is

wrong in our society. But what is wrong is rather that there is a gap between man and

the object, a misunderstanding, a sort of war.



So people must learn that there is not just a “technical object” in general, but a beginning

technical object (unity), a dichotomic object, or finally a networked object. And you can’t

have the same attitudes, or the same utilisation. Seeing the technical object historically,

teaching users to be completely in the historical present, that is the most important

cultural task for me.

Q: This brings us back to your idea of the incomprehension of the machine, due to its

being judged by a reason that is not contemporary with itself.

S:Yes, but there is not just reason, there is also knowledge. To understand a technical

object and to have the right attitude towards it you must first know how it is constituted

in its essence and be present at its genesis either directly or by being taught. But the

teaching of the history of technology does not exist. Beyond reason, and knowledge there

is perhaps a certain relation to technical reality, which is in part affectice or emotional.

Without an excess of passion or indifference, one must have an attitude of friendship, of

society with technical objects and also an ascetic attitude to be able to use them even

when they are old and unreliable, and an attitude of respect for its age.

Q: So the machinic essence resides in both its rationality and in its cultural value. But

does its cultural value reside in its rationality?

S: No doubt, as I have spoken of an essence of the technical object. But this essnce is not

only rational, or we must be rationalists and not pragmatists. We must be realist

rationalists, believe that reason attains things, attains physical processes, the totality of

the world. In that sense I would accept the idea of reason, provided that it is not

restrictive.

Q: Do you see this reason as inductive as concerns the production of the machine and of

its creation?

S: Yes it is inductive, and also to a certain extent deductive, but in the sense of a full

induction that stays close to the concrete, and of a reason which is thus extremely close



to the real, and which would not try to be a reason based on innate ideas. This point is

very important.

Q: This means that a poetic field appears around the machine. It lives in a poetic field.

S: If reason is conceived as inductive, and as trying not to distance itself from the

concrete and from the real, the ambience of the usage of the technical object, of its

invention, remains quite close to the world, and can even become a manner of decoding

the world with speeds, modes of looking, manners of comportment, that the simple body

would not have permitted. Here the technical object has a prothetic, or “prosthetic” as

Norbert Wiener calls it, value. To see the world from a plane or a satellite is to see it as

no man has ever seen it before, just as concretely but at a greater distance and with a

greater velocity. No privilege for seeing the world can be accorded to bipedalism or

vision from a car in motion. Anything goes, as long as one realises that it is a question of

different speeds and altitudes.

Q: Is it acceptable to compare you to Bachelard and his inductive thought, his inductive

interpretation of scientific instruments and method?

S: I don’t know. Bachelard is a poet., I don’t really know his works well enough.. But Ithink we could just as well do a psychoanalysis of the technical object, as Bachelard has

done a psychoanalysis of the elements. In particular, I think that each technical object

can be treated as having an intention and an attitude. When we contemplate a TV

emitter at the summit of a mountain: in itself it is just metal, a vast parabola made of

unoxydisable metal with a tiny dipole in its centre. It is rigid, but it is oriented, looking

into the distance it can receive from a distant emitter. For me it is more than a symbol,

rather a sort of gesture or intention or power, almost magical, a contemporary magic. In

this encounter between the elevated place and the key point for the transmission of

hyperfrequencies, there is a sort of connaturality between the human network and the

natural geography of the region. That is a poetic aspect, an aspect of signification and of

encounters of signification.



Further, by diving back in time one can find the poetic power of that which was once

extremely perfect and which one day will perhaps destroyed, by the progression of an

evolution which is extremely and very dramatically negating of that which was once

nevertheless an innovation; Look at the steam locomotives or the great ships that have

been set aside because they are outmoded. “Obsolescence” is an economic reality, but

alongside economic obsolescence there is a sort of poetic ascent which has not been

sufficiently highlighted. We lack technological poets.

Q: Perhaps here we can talk of reveries related to diverse machinic orders: reveries of

steam, or of electricity. Determining very external imagery of alternation and of power,

or determining reveries of certitude and of continuity. Should our research go in this

direction?

S: I am not competent enough. Do you mean to link continuity and electricity?

Q: Yes, because of the rotatory motion. I was thinking of course of the alternator, which

gives an illusion of continuity and certainty, as the cycle is conserved and speed is

conserved.

S: And the other characteristic, that of alternation, corresponds to steam?

Q: It’s a manifestation of power by gesticulation, by a sort of cinematic frenzy.

S: Yes, of course, it’s an interesting point of view. But the turbine, for a steam engine is

rotative and not at all alternative.. Further, even when it is alternative the steam engine

differs from electricity in that it possesses an internal power, a considerable internal

accumulation of energy. I used to use a “locomobile” to saw wood, a mobile sawmill. At a

pressure of 8k it could still keep a sawtable active for an hour and a half, without heating

up. No electric motor could do that. The electric motor is a poor thing which needs a

network., as soon as the network breaks down the motor stops. Even a three-phase

motor ceases to function when just one of its phases fails, whereas a steam engine is the

sovereign of continuity, because it contains a powerful reservoir. During the war we were



happy to have steam engines on the disassembled networks. They could go almost

anywhere, as long as there were rails, even if they were damaged.

I agree with this poetry, but it must not be too pointillist, too phenomenological, as

phenomenology relies only on perception, and that is terribly dangerous. We must go to

the bottom of things, and see reality, and above all the user must feel the reality, and not

the spectator.

Q:I was very surprised to hear you say that the alternator is a poor machine because it

depends on the network. Isn’t this rather an advantage, whereas the steam engine is

isolated?

S: Yes, but the steam engine is more universal. It can run on wood or coal, even low

quality coal. You can heat it with anything, whereas the alternator needs a source of

energy of several kilowatts, or at least of several hundred watts, which can hardly be

supplied by the network. The network (the grid) is fallacious (deceptive): it is not

absolutely constant. It’s very useful, but it is a servitude to be plugged into the network.

For example, a car doesn’t need the network, it carries its own reserves of fuel, it goes

further, it is more supple.

Q: But its autonomy is temporary, it depends on the network in many ways.

S: It depends on a different type of network, on a network where the contact does not

need to be constantly maintained, whereas the alternator must maintain its contact with

the network by pole, trolley, or socket, or some other permanent system.

Q: But the fact that we can say that electricity is always of good quality, doesn’t that

have ny consequences for our poetic and rational understanding of electric machines.

Electricity can be weak, but its quality is invariable.

S: Yes, but only if its frequency is constant! Is it? Yes, in general, in a well-constituted



network, the frequency is constant.

Q: But you can never say that electricity is of low quality, there is nolow quality

electricity. Whereas coal can be of low quality, and wood, and any fuel.

S:Yes electricity can be of low quality, it all depends on the use. If you use it just for the

energy, to make a universal motor turn, or to heat an iron … which amounts to

degrading energy, it is always good for that. But if you want to use electricity as a

starting point to produce a pure sound of frequency 50 Hertz, there is a problem,

because as well as the fundamental sine wave you have tiny supplementary

irregularities, which are not very pleasant when you want to visualise the sine wave.

Q2: I think Jean means the structure of the atom, the electrons, etc…

S: OK, it’s a question of purity, of electrons in transit, and not of chemical matter, of

chemical substances that can be more or less refined. From a fundamental and essential

point of view, I understand that purity. But from an informational point of view, it is not

always the case that the currrent is what you would like it to be. A continuous current

often has an important musical component, and a three-phased alterating current does

not always have perfect phase relations between the three phases, nor a perfectly stablefrequency, nor above all an absolute absence of harmonics.

Q: Inspired by your ideas I tend to see the long obscurity and incomprehension of the

steam engine as due to the fact that it was not theorised from the beginning, whereas

the electric motor (the alternator) was theorised from the from its origin and so has been

transparent. Do you see such a relation between empirical and theoretical machines?

S: Yes,the electric motor came afterwards, after the science that permitted the theory of

this motor. On the contrary, the steam engine was constituted at a time when

thermodynamics had not been developped., rather it called for the existence of a science

of thermodynamics. Hover there are imperfections in the electric motor, in the Gramme

machine or in the alternating current machine, in particular unforseeable phenomena of



hysteresis: losses due to Foucault currents (eddy currents). The Gramme machine was

not born perfect, it worked alright but it was not very efficient because of its heating up

at high speeds. It required a lot of perfectioning before reaching its familiar 90-92%

efficiency.

Q: I have often wondered about the relations between empiricism and theory with

regard to the opacity and the transparence of certain machines. Perhaps I have made a

too sharp distinction between the empirical machine and the theoretical machine. Thus I

have believed for a long time that the alternator came entirely from its theoretical

legitimacy, in contrast with any empirical illegitimacy, if we think of the well-developped

rationality of electricity. Do you think that, for example, the alternator is a machine that

can be said to be much more transparent than any steam engine, preciselyfor thisreason, because of the theoretical field in which it developped and of the theory that is

inherent to it?

S: I believe so, as regards the alternator, which was developped relatively late. It had

been preceded by the trials of the Gramme machine, which is a machine based on direct

current, and which can be used as an emitting machine (producer of energy), or a

receiving machine. The alternator came later, and is a direct application of alternating

currents, to produce them. It is also reversible relative to the alternating current motor.

The alternator must be thought in terms of the same theoretical current as that which

created the Ferranti transformer. This is around 1880, roughly the time when positive

science was developping as powerfully as possible towards technology, perhaps more

powerfully than ever, with a faith and an enthusiasm never to be seen again. At that

time, anything goes.

Q: So for you around this time is the beginning of the union between technology and

theory, or science and technology, which have now become almost indiscernible.

S: Not the beginning, since thermodynamics is relatively older, but let’s say the

friendship and the reversibility of science and theory, of science and technology, became

generalised during that period. There is a mode of thought, a modality of culture, which



is the unity, or at least the profound friendship, of science and technology. It was the

period of the Crookes tube and of the Coolidge tube, of the vast movement of science and

technology.

Q: And which now is more than a frienship, a marriage.

S: Yes, but a marriage that makes too much profit, in my opinion. At the time it was a

love affair, now it is totally different. There is a very organised and administrative

relation between industry and technological research bureaus on the one hand, and pure

science (which however is not completely pure) on the other. Now all that is too old,

there is no longer the enthusiasm for something new. At that time in 1880 the fecund

relation between science and technology had just been discovered. That was the youthful

age of that encounter, today it is no longer young.

The video ends with a long question by Jean Le Moyne

Q: We are making a 20 minute film on the wheel, with no music and no commentary, just

sounds produced by a wheel. We have a problem with the structure of the film, but we

aren’t sure whether this is a purely filmic problem or a mechanological one. If we begin

with a support wheel, it is soon complexified, adding gears and pulleys and chains, even becoming a motor at certain stages, and then adding to itself other wheels. We have a

whole society of wheels to deal with, so should our approach be historical or genetic?

S: Genetic!

(The End)

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Summary of Interview of Gilbert Simondon by Jean Lemoyne