Reading Thoughts and Notes
The Genesis of the Individual, Simondon
On paper

Summary
In this excerpt of The Genesis of the Individual, Simondon critiques common notions of understanding individuals, primarily from the standpoint that the two most common rely on existing notions of individuals. For hylomorphism, this is demonstrated with the concept of form which is in itself individuated from other forms. Simondon prefers to view individuals as beings in the process of individuation, which persists through time with no end (and perhaps no discernible beginning?). Individuation, to Simondon, must be understood in relations to the milieu, the other, the preindividual conditions that give rise and perpetuate the transductive process of individuation from prior preindividual states of being. These relations are immanent to the process of individuation. Moreover, individuation arrives as a resolution to tensions in the preindividual, and through transduction, comes to resolve them and continues to individuate.

Compelling Points
Cannot use logic to understand individuation because logic presupposes individuation
Thus the principle of the excluded middle (that either the proposition or its negation is true) does not fully conceptualize individuation because it supposes individuated concepts which make up the proposition
Can come to understand individuation through likeness to our own experiences of individuation of knowledge
Individuation is a process throughout time, which does not complete or finish in the production of “an individual”, can only maintain that which individuates
Psychic individuation and resolution implies that we have modeled ourselves within society and world; “To the collective understood as an axiomatic that resolves the psychic problematic corresponds the notion of the transindividual”
Every individual is a form of preindividual to the next phase of individuation

Implications
We literally cannot conceptualize the preindividual and it is by definition not understandable, as we understand in concepts and logic and symbolic reasoning, and these are individuations. I think this concept of a preindividual is not helpful in understanding individuation. Individuation emerges from laws of the universe and the state of the universe. That is everything there is. That encompasses the preindividual, the milieu, the other. To understand individuation, one must ask the question of why the individual continues to individuate. With this, I think Simondon would agree, as he views individuation through a lens of a process, and more specifically, a transductive process, or one that propagates itself.

We can understand individuation through logic and conceptual reasoning just as one can the motion of a pendulum through kinematic equations; the motion itself is continuous through time and non discrete, yet just because its properties are such does not mean we cannot understand them with antagonistic concepts. Equations of motion, themselves composed of discrete symbols, can perfectly capture the continuous dynamics of the motion of the pendulum through time, without damaging the integrity of the continuity. I can plug in any real number as a moment in time to recover the position of the pendulum. The substance of that which we try to understand does not necessarily constrict our ability to understand it merely because we understand using discretized, semi-stable concepts and logics. Lossless compression exists. Calculus exists. Continuity can be described with discontinuous symbols. I suppose to some degree, Simondon must agree, as he has written extensively on individuation – in doing so, trying to understand individuation through symbolic representations. However, if his understanding rests on a fundamentally indescribable, only tangentially knowable concept of the preindividual, it is a foundationally weak understanding.