Iliadis, A. (2013). Informational ontology: The meaning of Gilbert Simondon’s concept of individuation. communication +1, 2(1), 1–19. doi:10.7275/R59884XW.
Read in full in NOTE-1485.
Key takeaways
- Simondon’s notion of information extends the cyberneticists’ (Shannon, Wiener, Osgood) rather than rejecting it: it adds “interoperability” and “indeterminacy” and treats information “as” reality, not only “about” or “for” it (pp. 5–9).
- Four concepts carry the ontology (pp. 10–16): metastability (information exists only between “two disparate realities”), individuation (information “is the formula of individuation”), transduction (the meeting of two disparate informational realms, which “points to the emergence of a new informational structure, one that resolves a disparity between fields”, p. 13) and concretization (the technical object’s non-additive self-integration, “the engine that drives individuation”, p. 15).
- For communication research, an “individuative methodology” would study how communicative structures modulate in the act of communication rather than the transmission of meaning between pre-given entities (p. 17).
Why this is here
The owner asked for the works Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy (2024, LIT-1902) lean on. The parent takes three things from Iliadis:
- The epithet (p. 1354): Simondon is “the first true philosopher of information [and communication]” (Iliadis p. 1). The words are Iliadis’s own opening sentence. The bracket is the parent’s addition: Iliadis argues that Simondon gives communication a philosophy only on pp. 17–18.
- The definition of individuation’s outcome (p. 1355): “The provisional outcome of individuation is the meaning that emerges from ‘a new informational structure, one that resolves a disparity between fields’ (Iliadis, 2013, p. 13).” The quotation is exact and the page is right. In Iliadis the phrase describes transduction, which “signals the beginning of the process of individuation”. The parent makes it the outcome and adds “meaning”. The addition has warrant in Iliadis’s p. 11, where Simondon’s information is “a meaning that arises when an operation of individuation discovers that the two disparate yet real dimensions may be a system of information”. Faithful in substance.
- Organizational realities (p. 1351): Iliadis is cited beside Bencherki & Iliadis 2021 for “the communicative encounters of individuation processes (events) through which organizational realities are formed”. Iliadis says nothing about organizations. The citation is loose: it holds for Bencherki & Iliadis (LIT-1922), not for this paper.
The record holds Simondon’s own book as LIT-1648, Unavailable, so this is one of the record’s second-hand readings of him; its quotations are from the 2007 Aubier reprint of L’individuation psychique et collective (LIT-1900), in Iliadis’s translation. THEORY-1276 states what it supports.