Reforming the Concepts of Form and Information

Abstract

Since the 1940s cybernetics had conceived the technological concept of information as a paradigm which could be at least in principle extended to all the fields of scientific research: biology, psychology, psychopathology, sociology and political economy. During the 1950s Simondon was adopting it as a key methodological tools for his philosophy of individuation. From this perspective his book Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information can be considered an experimental work in progress where the concepts of form and information, which Simondon borrows mainly from Gestalttheorie and cybernetics, are strongly revised in order to build an anti-substantialistic and non-deterministic philosophy of all kinds of physical, biological, psychic and social processes. In this chapter I shall follow the route traced by Simondon: after displaying his ‘double’ criticism to the concept of form – both Aristotelian and Gestalt-like –, I will delve into what he conceived as a ‘reform’ of the cybernetic concept of information.