ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Gilbert Simondon’s analyses of physical, vital and psychosocial individuations. It introduces the physical paradigm of crystallisation and clarifies the way in which life and the psychosocial world emerge from pre-individual nature as their condition. Simondon considers a variation of this example: the crystallisation of a supersaturated solution through the insertion of a seed, which breaks the stable equilibrium and shifts the system into a different energetic process. The cybernetic notion of information relies on a more fundamental operation, which Simondon calls “primary information”. In fact, Simondon shows that physical and living beings have different topologies and chronologies; they also differ with regard to their capacity to receive information and the capacity of invention. Simondon explains this increasing capacity of the organism through a “slowing down” of the process of individuation. Simondon argues that in the psychic individual affectivity no longer fulfils a regulating function; it actually causes additional problems because of its “overflowing” dynamic.
