Social Homeostasis and the Exceeding Normativity

Abstract

The possibility of a science of the ‘intermediate zone’ between the individual and society – i.e. transindividual individuation – is elaborated by Simondon in direct confrontation with Norbert Wiener’s project of a cybernetic science of the social system. On the basis of Canguilhem’s definition of society as ‘machine and life’, he contrasts Wiener’s social theory, grounded on the concepts of homeostasis and self-regulation through feedback. Hence it is possible to question which kind of model is provided in Simondon’s theory of social systems, and, in particular, which kind of regulation do we face, according to Simondon, where society is concerned. He tends to abandon the ontological opposition tout court between artificial and natural structures, and rather to question the processes of regulation in order to ground his theory of the social system on a model for the understanding of all systems as internally discontinuous, and whose functioning exceeds the conservative dynamics typical of homeostatic processes.