On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Part III, Chapter 2

 

Summary of Part III, Chapter 2: Relations Between Technical Thought And Other Species Of Thought

This chapter is divided into two parts, “Technical thought and aesthetic thought,” and “Technical thought, theoretical thought, practical thought.” The first lays out a quite interesting theory of beauty, and the second sets the stage for the final chapter, on philosophical thought. The whole can be seen to be following through the relations established in the previous chapter, for which a diagram can be found in the previous summary.

in order for works of art to be possible, they must be made possible by a fundamental tendency in the human being, and by the ability to experience the aesthetic impression in certain real and vital circumstances. The artwork that is part of a civilization uses aesthetic feeling and satisfies, sometimes artificially and in an illusory manner, man’s tendency to seek a complement with respect to a totality, when he exerts a certain type of thought. (192)

S seems to be forging a path between a certain universalist or inherent “fundamental tendency in the human being” with a historical situatedness, in terms of a particular culture at a particular stage in the historical transition he has outlined, from magical to post-magical thought. Thus, in the post-magical world divided between science and religion, the role of aesthetic thought and the work of art is to recreate the sense of totality that had been lost with the end of unified magical thinking. However, S stresses again that this is not simply a survival or atavism of the older magical era, but something new and distinct; and also, as indicated in the above quote, that the sense of totality achieved may only be superficial and “illusory.”

He makes an interesting use of the term “metábasis eis állo” which is an abbreviation of the phrase “metábasis eis állo génos” from Aristotle, meaning a change from one genus (e.g., subject, line of reasoning, or discipline) to another. For Aristotle, and subsequent thinkers through Husserl, such metabasis has typically been considered a bad thing. Simondon, however, drops off the genos and transforms it into something more like “change into an other,” a positive thing in Simondon’s thought, and linked to his concept of transduction.

The aesthetic character of an act or a thing is its function of totality, its existence, both objective and subjective, as an outstanding point. Any act, any thing, any moment has in itself the ability to become an outstanding point of a new reticulation of the universe. Every culture selects the acts and situations that are apt to become outstanding points; but culture is not what creates the aptitude of a situation to become an outstanding point; it only forms a barrage against certain types of situations, leaving narrow straights for aesthetic expression with respect to the spontaneity of the aesthetic impression; culture intervenes as limit rather than as creator. (193)

The single reticulation of the magical world has been replaced with two separate reticulations of technics and religion in the modern world, but these cannot recreate the original unity, which can only be approached with aesthetics.

To this day, it does not appear possible for the two reticulations, that of technics within the geographical world and that of religions in the human world, to analogically encounter each other in a real, symbolic relation. And yet only in this way could the aesthetic impression state the rediscovery of the magical totality, by indicating that the forces of thought have once again found one another. Aesthetic feeling, common to both religious thought and technical thought, is the only bridge that could allow for the linking of these two halves of thought that result from the abandonment of magical thought. (194)

Aesthetic reality is “a new mediation between man and the world, an intermediate world between man and the world.”

Works of art recreate the power of key-points by their integratedness with their surroundings, a quality which distinguishes them from technical instruments, which retain their technical essence no matter where they are: “a statue is not placed just anywhere, a tree is not planted just anywhere” (195). It is not the imitation of nature [as presumed by some philosophers] but this integration with nature and the surrounding world, which defines the aesthetic object.

S develops his interesting theory of beauty in contrasting between technical and aesthetic objects:

technical objects are not inherently beautiful in themselves, unless one is seeking a type of presentation that answers directly to aesthetic concerns; in this case, there is a true distance between the technical object and the aesthetic object; it is as if there were in fact two objects, the aesthetic object enveloping and masking the technical object... (196)

His example is a modern water tower disguised to match an adjacent ancient ruin—a contemporary example of the same sort would be a cell tower masked to look like a tree. However, such an obvious example is not necessary for his argument. Way back in chapter one, S had distinguished between intrinsic, technical constraints shaping development, and extrinsic constraints coming from such silly and superfluous realms as marketing. Thus, for S, any technical object really is two objects, the pure, essential technical object corresponding to the intrinsic technical traits, and the second object a sort of aesthetic coating of all that is non-essential, but used for instance in marketing, corresponding for example to the “psychic and social inferences” which pollute the automobile as technical object (cf. chapter 1). Upon reading S’s claim that “technical objects are not inherently beautiful in themselves,” I thought of two drills I have near my desk; one, an old metal-green drill I inherited from my grandfather, very solid and elegantly curved in a way they don’t make them anymore; and the other, a garish plastic-rubber yellow and black thing I unfortunately had to replace it with. Both are, of course, both technical and aesthetic objects, equivalent insofar as they function as drills, but very different aesthetically—neither, perhaps, intended to be beautiful, per se, but rather to evoke various impressions of functionality, masculinity, and modernity. The older drill, however, has taken on a sort of beauty through its age and its association with an older aesthetic now flavored with nostalgia. Thus, while these drills as technical objects are completely interchangeable, and thus dissociated from context, as an aesthetic object, the older drill is beautiful through its integration into a certain sense of history and family belonging.

And this is the essence of S’s theory of beauty when applied to technical objects, that it is an effect of their integration into the world in the manner of an aesthetic object (another example he gives is that of a sail that is beautiful when filled by the wind). “But it is not only the technical object that is beautiful: it is the singular point of the world that the technical object concretizes” (197) “The technical object is beautiful when it has encountered a ground that suits it, whose own figure it can be, in other words when it completes and expresses the world.”

However, to return to the ugly, new yellow-and-black drill, this is also designed to evoke connotations and thus bind it into a meaningful cultural context. Thus the aspect of integration which S uses to explain the experience of beauty, no doubt actually informs not just beauty but a wide range of aesthetic reactions to objects, including ugliness, boredom, inanity, who knows what else—basically whatever reaction to an aesthetic object is possible.

S goes on to argue that although technical objects, by definition, are not beautiful in and of themselves (for reasons given above), they can come to be understood as beautiful in their technicity through education, e.g., in the mind of a student of science who comes to sense the beauty of their operation (his example is a radio relay). And this again is because this is an understanding of their operation as integrated into a universe: “The telephone call center is beautiful not because of its characteristics as an object, but because it is a key-point in collective and individual life” (198). As he states it later on, “it is never the object strictly speaking that is beautiful: it is the encounter — which takes place about the object — between a real aspect of the world and a human gesture” (202).

One can thus say that the aesthetic object is not strictly speaking an object, but rather the extension of the natural or human world that remains integrated within the reality that bears it … (199)

In addition to differing from technical thought in the above ways, aesthetic thought also differs from religious thought in that “it can neither be universalized nor subjectivized.” It does not take on the meaning that religion does:

the work of art remains artificial and localized, produced at a certain moment; it is not anterior and superior to the world and to man. The set [ensemble] of all works of art perpetuates the magical universe and maintains its structure: it marks the neutral point between technics and religion.

As this neutral point between technics and religion, aesthetics is thus not just a holdover from the time of magic, but a working part of this post-magical reality. “A norm of beauty exists within these two opposite modes of thinking [i.e., technics and religion], a norm that makes them tend toward one another by applying them to the same universe.”

Aesthetic reality is thus a surplus to given reality, but according to lines that already exist in given reality; it is what reintroduces the figural functions and the functions of ground into given reality which, in the moment of the magical universe’s dissociation, had become technics and religion. (200)

While technical thought is made up of schemas, of figural elements without ground reality, and religious thought is made up of ground qualities and forces without figural structures, aesthetic thought combines figural structures and ground qualities.

In discussing how aesthetic works relate to each other, he goes into an interesting discussion of analogy, then discusses the relation between perception and participation. The translators provide a lengthy footnote (202n5) discussing his Simondon’s term “appeal aspect” (Caractère d’appel) in terms of the Gestalt concept of valence. S surveys changes through the ancient Tragic, the Romantic, and the Classical periods of art. He intends an important distinction between superficial art which fails to achieve anything lasting or meaningful, and the more important art which does:

premature aestheticizing tends toward a static satisfaction, toward a false completion prior to a complete specification; true technicity and true religion should not tend toward aestheticism, which maintains a rather facile magical unity through compensation, and thereby preserves magic and religion at a rather poorly developed level. The real development of thought requires the different attitudes of thought to be capable of detaching from each other and to even become antagonistic, for they cannot be simultaneously thought and developed by a single subject; they require, in fact, that a subject realize them and assume them in a profound, essential way, turning one of them into the principle of the subject’s existence and life. (208)

This presence of multiple attitudes existing at once in the work of art [cf. Bakhtin] requires that such art be social and collective, part of a tradition; “a second function of aesthetic judgment thus becomes that of preparing for the communication between social groups representing the specialization of different types of thought.” After all, “the subject is a collective being.” He refers to the “aesthetic quest,” bringing to mind his language in earlier chapters, that magic is not about superstition but about the will to explore and to supersede the given; thus, this aesthetic thinking also motivates scientific and technical progress and invention.

Aesthetic intention in itself is already the exigency of totality, the quest for a whole reality. Without aesthetic intention, there would be an indefinite quest for the same realities within ever more narrow specializations; this is why aesthetic intention appears like a perpetual deviation on the basis of the central directions of a quest; in reality this deviation is a quest for the real continuity beneath the arbitrary fragmentation of domains. (210)

One could even ask oneself whether art, to the extent that it observes, is not also what somehow sums up [résume] and renders an ensemble of realities transposable to another temporal unit, to another moment in history. Art, in the celebration and final investiture that it brings about, transforms the fulfilled and localized reality hic et nunc into a reality that will be able to traverse time and space: it renders human fulfillment non-finite; it is commonly said that art eternalizes different realities; art, in fact, does not eternalize but renders transductive, giving a localized and fulfilled reality the power to pass to other places and other moments. (210-11)

The second part of the chapter focuses on relations between theoretical and practical thought as further splits within the technical-religious divide, setting the stage for philosophical thought’s “role of convergence” in a future, “post-aesthetic” order (211). In the current order, it is the breakdown of existing models in practice that generates the need for innovation, or in Simondon’s way of putting it, regarding technics:

But the failure of the technical gesture phase shifts the technical act into two opposing realities: one figural, made of schemas of action, habits, and structured gestures learned by man as a means, and the other a ground reality, the qualities, dimensions, and powers of the world to which the technical gesture applies itself. This ground reality that undergirds the technical gesture is the dynamism of things, that through which they are productive, and that which gives them their fecundity, efficacy, and useable energy. (213)

This proceeds through inductive thought:

inductive thought comes from the failure of direct, parceled, localized technical action; this failure provokes the disjunction of the figural reality and the ground reality that was associated with it; inductive thought organizes the ground realities. (215)

As an example he gives a problem which emerged in hydraulics, whereby the water in a pump could not rise above a certain height, which fact was inexplicable according to existing models.

It is in order to recover the broken compatibility that technical thought splits into praxis and theory: theoretical thought which arises from technics is the thought at the heart of which it is possible to think the totality of the conditions of operation in a way that is once again homogeneous and coherent; through hydrostatics the system of conditions of the rising of water within the body of the pump can once again be homogeneous... (216)

Like technical thought, religious thought also splits when encountering limits, in this case to its imposition of totality. In contrast to the inductive approach of theoretical technicity, theoretical thought in religious thought is deductive, presuming a totality, a given, and then reasoning to particulars:

For contemplative deductive knowledge, the effort of knowledge is only that of becoming aware of an already existing order, not that of an effective ordering; knowledge does not change being, and always remains partially insufficient for grasping being, which is prior to it and at the heart of which knowledge deploys itself like a reflection. (218)

S makes the interesting claim that “the use of number within the sciences appears to be of religious origin rather than of technical origin; indeed, number is basically structure that allows deduction and allows the grasping of a particular reality in its reference to the whole [l’ensemble], so as to integrate itself within it...” He contrasts Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on number, with Plato’s side correlating with the religious and also the dominant scientific use today. Religious ethical thinking also proceeds from totality to particulars, for instance Kant’s categorical imperative:

the categorical religious imperative is categorical prior to being rational; it is everything at once, because the totality of being pre-exists all particular action and infinitely surpasses it, just as reality envelops the particular being who is the subject of moral action. (219)

A “complete” knowledge and a “complete” ethics would unite the opposed inductive/[pragmatic] and deductive/totalizing approaches of technics and religion, and their instantiations in theory and practice (220). This synthesis is a path to grasping reality: “the real is the synthesis of the virtual and the necessary [i.e., between the theoretical/desired/possible, and the limits set to this by nature, existing knowledge, etc.], or rather the foundation of their compatibility; between inductive pluralism and deductive pluralism, it is the stability of the figure-ground relation taken as a complete reality.”

In order for the divergence within the coming-into-being of thought to be fully compensated, the distance between the theoretical order and the practical order would have to be overcome by a type of thinking that has a definitive capacity of synthesis, and is able to present itself as a functional analog of magic, and then of aesthetic activity; in other words, the work that aesthetic thought accomplishes at the level of the primitive opposition between technics and religion would have to be carried out anew at the level of the relation between theoretical and practical thought. This work is what philosophical reflection must fulfill [accomplir]. (221)

Philosophical thought has to return to an originary grasping of the coming-into-being at the end of which it (philosophical thought) intervenes as a force of convergence.

The ensuing chapter on philosophical thought will also be about culture: “this intermediate mode can be called culture; philosophy would thus be constructive and regulative of culture, translating the sense [sens] of religions and of technics into cultural content." (222)

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Part 3, Chapter 1

Summary of Part 3, Chapter 1: The Genesis of Technicity

S begins by introducing the concept of phase:

By phase, we mean not a temporal moment replaced by another, but an aspect that results from a splitting in two of being and in opposition to another aspect; this sense of the word phase is inspired by the notion of a phase ratio in physics; one cannot conceive of a phase except in relation to another or to several other phases; in a system of phases there is a relation of equilibrium and of reciprocal tensions; it is the actual system of all phases taken together that is the complete reality, not each phase in itself; a phase is only a phase in relation to others, from which it distinguishes itself in a manner that is totally independent of the notions of genus and species. (173, emphasis added)

[The temporal meaning of “phase” is actually a derived sense, by way of the phases or appearances/aspects of the moon. Another related sense to how S uses the word is that of variant in biology, e.g., orange or red phase bearded dragons.]

The existence of a plurality of phases finally defines the reality of a neutral center of equilibrium in relation to which there is a phase shift.

[He goes on to explain how this is different from a dialectical schema, but I think it is also interesting to consider how this view of a system of plural phases with a “neutral center of equilibrium” replaces or surpasses the cybernetic emphasis in homeostasis.]

Each phase in such a system is “a symbol of the other,” i.e., they necessarily refer to each other in a system of differences, like letters or words, etc.

He thus describes the “phase shift” from the system of magical thinking to the split between technics and religion, each of which is a phase in a new system centered on aesthetic thought, which becomes the neutral point, or center of equilibrium, of this system, and an incomplete analog of the previous magical unity. Religion and technics then split further into theoretical and practical modes; scientific thought is the neutral point of the two theoretical modes, and ethical thought of the two practical modes. Philosophical research is an attempt within this system to find a new, superior analog to the magical unity, surpassing the first analog of aesthetic thought through the convergence and reunion of science and ethics.

S proceeds to discuss the phase shift from the “primitive magical unity,” drawing on the concepts of figure and ground from Gestalt theory, with the caveat that Gestalt’s emphasis on stability be replaced with metastability (177). The primitive magical universe defines “a universe that is at once subjective and objective prior to any distinction between the object and the subject, and consequently prior to any appearance of the separate object.” It is in the phase shift and fragmentation that comes after this that the technical object becomes objectified, and a religious mediator is subjectified.

The magical world is structured through a network of key points (points-clés) which are both spatial (privileged or special locations) and temporal (privileged or special moments or dates). It is these key points which have power, and human specialists access this power through them:

The magical universe is made of a network of access points to each domain of reality: thresholds, summits, limits, and crossing points, attached to one another through their singularity and their exceptional character. (180)

Individuals interact with these key-points through [ritual and] “friendship,” not as dominating, detached subjects:

To climb a slope in order to go toward the summit, is to make one’s way toward the privileged place that commands the entire mountain chain, not in order to dominate or possess it, but in order to exchange a relationship of friendship with it. (179)

It is wrong to suppose that the remnants of magical thinking in the present world are represented by superstitions, which are just degraded vestiges. Rather, it is in “high, noble, or sacred forms of thought” such as the will to exploration or ascent, that we see the survival of magical thinking and its relation to the world of key points. Even contemporary holidays and vacations are attempts to reconnect with key points.

With the phase shift away from the magical order, “figure and ground separate by detaching themselves from the universe to which they adhered” (181). The key-points as figure, “detached from the ground whose key they were, become technical objects, transportable and abstracted from the milieu.” Ground becomes “detached powers and forces,” subjectivized “by personifying themselves in the form of the divine and the sacred (God, heroes, priests).” Thus, the figure is fragmented into individual technical objects, while the ground is universalized into forces, the first thought through technics and the second through religion. After the phase shift and the loss of unity, technics is left with a status, and focus, lower than unity, and religion with a status higher than unity (185). Technics takes the element as its object, decomposing actions into elementary operations that can be solved technically; the technical object is always less than, and subordinate to, the reality it is a part of, acting only on some particular place and time. Religion, for its part, takes aim at intention and tries to solve questions of universal validity, such as ethical rules applicable in all times and places. Technics focuses on the how and on results; religion on the why and on intention (188).

But religious thought, inversely, which is the foundation of obligation, creates a search in ethical thinking for an unconditional justification that makes each act and every subject appear as inferior to real unity; related back to a totality that dilates infinitely, the moral act and subject derive their meaning only from their relation with this totality; the communication between the totality and the subject is precarious, because at every instant the subject is brought back to the dimension of its own unity, which is not that of the totality; the ethical subject is de-centred by the religious requirement. (190)

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Part Three, Introduction

 Summary of Part Three, [Introduction]: Evolution of Technical Reality

Part three, “The Essence of Technicity,” begins with this brief introduction, which is not listed in the table of contents, and is given the title “Evolution of Technical Reality” only in the header. Sort of a hidden track, you could say.

S lays out the underlying question for part three (167): “what is the sense of the genesis of technical objects with respect to the whole of thought, of man’s existence, and of his manner of being in the world?” His answer to this question will be a “generalized genetic interpretation of the relation between man and the world” (167-8).

He discusses his particular meaning of genesis, which was developed in his other book, as “as the process of individuation in its generality” (168):

There is genesis when the coming-into-being of a system of a primitively oversaturated reality, rich in potential, greater than unity and harboring an internal incompatibility, constitutes for this system the discovery of compatibility, a resolution through the advent of structure. This structuration is the advent of an organization that is the basis of an equilibrium of metastability. Such genesis opposes itself to the degradation of the potential energies contained in a system through the passage to a stable state from which transformation is no longer possible.

He criticizes, or rather questions the relevance in this context, of the evolutionary concept of adaptation, which implies a correction of the relationship between species and environment towards a “functional finality” and a “stable equilibrium,” “which does not appear to be correct in man’s case, perhaps no more than it is for any living being.” He discusses the Bergsonian concept of élan vital as an alternative to adaptation, then announces that the truth is somewhere between these:

It seems that these two opposed notions, as the couple they form, can be replaced, by the notion of the individuation of oversaturated systems, conceived as successive resolutions of tensions through the discovery of structures at the heart of a system rich in potential.

Rather than tending to the final state of stable equilibrium, evolution produces metastability, “going from metastable state to metastable state” (169), and thus charged with potential. S provides a very Simondonian quote, “the potential is one of the forms of the real, as completely as the actual” (168) [which stands in nice contrast to the position of my high school teacher, Mr. Bonfigli, who used to say, “potential means you ain’t done shit yet.”]

[I must have that quote slightly misremembered, because I doubt Mr. Bonfigli would use the word “ain’t.”]

But in any case it is easy to see how this idea of the reality of potential, having real effects in a system, links us to the physical analogy of metastability, and plays a major role in Simondon’s theory of the evolution of technology, as the “discovery” of potential structure.

He lays out another of his historical just-so stories, which will be developed more fully in the next chapter. Human history begins in the magical phase or mode of relation with the world: “in the magical mode the mediation between man and the world is not yet concretized and constituted as standing apart, by means of specialized objects or human beings” (169). The magical phase splits into technicity and religion, which focus on the functions of figure and ground, respectively. This essentially sets up how S will go about answering his initial question, the relation between technicity and other forms of thought (e.g., religion, art, social science, etc.), through this initial family relationship. To the tendency towards divergence in different kinds of thought, must be opposed the thinking of convergence, “a relational function maintaining unity despite this divergence” (170):

The purpose [sens] of philosophical thought, intervening between the two representative orders and the two active orders of thought, is to make them converge and establish a mediation between them. Now, in order for this mediation to be possible, the very genesis of these forms of thought must be known and accomplished in a complete manner on the basis of previous stages of technicity and religiosity... (171)

 

The Human Use of Human Beings, Chapter 2

 

Summary of Chapter 2: Progress and Entropy

 

As it moves onto chapter 2 it becomes clear this book is not so much a primer in cybernetics as a general discussion of philosophical topics related to cybernetics. Wiener starts with the observation that "we as humans are not isolated systems" and we not only need to eat, we also need information. For Wiener, information is more important than energy [perhaps because it has to do with how the energy is organized and thus resistant to entropy]. He embarks on a lengthy discussion of the hypothetical, non-existent "Maxwell demon," to what end, it is not clear; part of what he draws out of this is that 19th century Newtonian physics (out of which the concept of the Maxwell Demon arose) makes the error of thinking of information as free when in fact it involves energy. One of the great advances which render 20th century science better is that we understand this. He moves onto his criticism of words like "life" and "soul" as being poorly defined; he is leading to a discussion of the similarities of living beings and certain machines.

The first of his several apparently unintentional references to labor appears in his invocation of Humpty Dumpty making words work for him (“I pay them extra, and make them do what I want”). [So machines are alive in the same sense as words are for Humpty Dumpty? and how important is their "life" to his sense of being their "master"?]. Anyway both "life-imitating automata" and living animals are "pockets of decreasing entropy in a frame­work in which the large entropy tends to increase" (32). General features of these life-imitating automata: 1) effectors (to make something happen); 2) sensors (to take in information); 3) feedback (to learn from past actions, and this generates or transforms new actions). (33)

Wiener returns to the theme of the previous chapter of the scientist as one who fights against disorder, and thus against evil. The question of the Manichaean or Augustinian character of evil is revisited. The Manichaean devil would be a wily, manipulative opponent; there is an interesting link here to metis (and the opposition to metis or distinction therefrom, advocated by the philosophers for their "reason"). Anyway scientists fight the passive Augustinian devil, not the Manichaean one which is involved in games, etc. [And here Wiener’s argument links with the founding distinction between (truth-loving) philosophers and (wily) sophists.].

Wiener then  moves to a discussion of passive faith in progress, which he ties to the Enlightenment. It is passive faith he is talking about, so phenomena such as the French Revolution, and communism, etc., are exceptions and do not count (he calls the French Revolution “the crack in the fabric of the Enlightenment”). He points out that this way of thinking is new in world history, and goes into the various faiths and why they exemplify belief in a world without the possibility for progress. As a contrast to faith in progress he gives Darwin's theory of natural selection, which is not directed; this he links to a later breakthrough in learning machines with Ashby. The concept of "purposefulness" is apparently critiqued but then adopted into the discussion, this is mushy imho.  He finally turns to a pessimistic view in which "we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet" (40). His message is stoical, though; we must do the best we can with dignity. He discusses how modernity (rapid technological change and faith in progress) is very new in the history of the world, and quite different from what went before; it is also very destructive and unsustainable, leading to future collapse and the extinction of the species.