Jason Tuckwell

This special issue of Substance, "Individuation in the Light of Simondon," marks the arrival of the English translation of Gilbert Simondon's Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (2020). To say the translation has been long-awaited is something of an understatement. Nevertheless, it is a major event in the Anglophone reception of Simondon's work and should do much to cement his position as a key reference point in the intellectual history of 20th-century French philosophy. It is sure to have a decisive impact on contemporary debates in philosophy, literary, and cultural studies, especially concerning the ethics and philosophy of technology, the philosophy of biology and science, and studies in... Read More.

Simondon presented his paper "Forme, Information et Potentiels" to the _Société́ Française de Philosophie_ on 27 February 1960. The paper ambitiously proposed a principle for the unification of the human sciences, translated in the Supplementary volume of _Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information_ (2020). Simondon provides a succinct precis of the major features of his ontology. However, in the light of a more critical encounter with Simondon's oeuvre, the lively debate following the presentation, which was omitted from the official publications, is of particular interest here. During this exchange, a critical consensus emerged that Simondon's foundational ontology might rely upon metaphor. In his defense, Simondon engages in two illuminating exchanges with Paul Ricœur and Jean Hyppolite, addressing signification at the limits of language and information. This article examines whether Simondon's ontology can be reduced to a series of metaphorical transpositions. It argues that the consistency and originality of Simondon's ontology resides in the decisive function that information plays, prior to signification and language.

Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between techné and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematises techné in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, and upon phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, techné is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature.