Offering an overall insight into the French tradition of philosophy of technology, this volume is meant to make French-speaking contributions more accessible to the international philosophical community. The first section, “Negotiating a Cultural Heritage,” presents a number of leading 20th century philosophical figures and intellectual movements that help shape philosophy of technology in the Francophone area, and feed into contemporary debates. The second section, “Coining and Reconfiguring Technoscience,” traces the genealogy of this controversial concept and discusses its meanings and relevance. (...) A third section, “Revisiting Anthropological Categories,” focuses on the relationships of technology with the natural and the human worlds from various perspectives that include anthropotechnology, Anthropocene, technological and vital norms and temporalities. The final section, “Innovating in Ethics, Design and Aesthetics,” brings together contributions that draw on various French traditions to afford fresh insights on ethics of technology, philosophy of design, techno-aesthetics and digital studies. The contributions in this volume are vivid and rich in original approaches that can spur exchanges and debates with other philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Before his death in 1989, Gilbert Simondon wrote two major books consisting of his principal and complementary theses, both defended in 1958. The complementary thesis on the mode of existence of technical objects was published in 1958, while it was only in 1964 that sections of his principal thesis on individuation were made available to the public (and even then only the chapters dedicated to the regimes of physical and vital individuation, excluding those dealing with psychic and collective individuation.) Over (...) the course of his career, Simondon produced other major texts, but only in the form of unpublished courses or conference presentations published in poorly distributed journals. Some of these texts have .. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann’s complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler’s model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon’s notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

De façon très allusive dans quelques textes de Signes et dans une note de travail du Visible et l’invisible, Merleau-Ponty a indiqué qu’élucider la question d’une « chair du social » exigeait un approfondissement préalable des notions de Gestalt, d’institution et de symbolisme. L’objet de cet article est de montrer comment Simondon a repris la question au point où Merleau-Ponty l’a laissée, en décrivant l’activité ou l’invention technique comme l’inscription matérielle d’un collectif en genèse, non partagé par la dualité du (...) psychique et du social . La pensée technique, loin d’être anecdotique ou spécialisée, apparaît donc comme un moment essentiel dans l’élaboration d’une théorie générale du lien social et de la socialisation des individus. (shrink)

Personalized medicine has recently become the new horizon of healthcare policies worldwide, but it hasalso given rise to misunderstandings and conflicting debates due to the lack of clear definitions and appropriate framing. Personalized medicine is mainly defined as the tailoring of diagnosis and therapies to the genetic profile of each patient, both enhanced by considerable improvements of technologies for acquiring and processing large amounts of data. Is personalized medicine the right term however, considering that it focuses on signaling pathways at (...) the molecular level, where undoubtely persons as such cannot be found?The rival expression «person-centered medicine» has been coined to avoid any ambiguity: on the one hand, molecular biomedicine improved by high-throughtput molecular technologies is more legitimately labelled «individualized» or «precision» medicine, while on the other hand «person-centered medicine» is considered the only authentic personalized medicine insofar as it focuses on the patient as a whole.Far from overcoming the misunderstandings and conflicting views at stake in current debates on futuremedicine however, this divide between personalized and person-centered medicine gives rise to new difficulties and proves to be misleading. Conceptual confusions remain underinvestigated and undermine current attempts to clarify core issues of biomedical research and biomedicine today. This paper intends tohighlight these confusions. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann’s complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler’s model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon’s notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

resumo: Enquanto as duas teses defendidas por Simondon em 1958 relevam o problema da individuação humana na sua dimensão psicossocial e técnica, a publicação nos últimos anos do conjunto do corpus simondoniano sugere que outro tema constitui o fio condutor do pensamento de Simondon por três décadas, dos anos 50 ao início dos anos 80: aquele da vida. Ora, enquanto o problema da individuação humana poderia ser interpretado na ótica de uma reflexão política, notadamente através do conceito de “transindividualidade” desenvolvido (...) nas teses e efetivamente considerado pelos comentadores como o conceito chave da política simondoniana, a questão de se saber o que se torna essa política simondoniana coloca-se, precisamente, no momento em que o deslocamento do acento em direção a uma filosofia da vida é operado. Na medida em que o conceito de transindividualidade desaparece dos escritos posteriores às teses, a questão coloca-se ainda mais. Como compreender esta centralidade do tema da vida, enquanto que aquele do homem e de seus modos de ser no mundo parecia privilegiado nas teses? Em qual medida este deslocamento de acento conduz Simondon a abandonar a reflexão política proposta nas teses em prol de uma antropologia biológica que, cabe perguntar-se, flertaria com o programa da sociobiologia dos anos 70? Este artigo propõe elementos em resposta a essas duas questões. abstract: Whereas the two theses defended by Simondon in 1958 highlight the problem of human individuation in its psychosocial and technical dimension, the publication in the last years of the set of the Simondonian corpus suggests that another theme constitutes the leading thread of Simondon’s thought for three decades, from the 1950s to the early 1980s: that of life. Now, whereas the problem of human individuation could be interpreted in the view of a political reflection, mostly through the concept of “transindividuality” developed in the theses and effectively considered by the commentators as the key concept of Simondonian politics, the question of knowing what makes this Simondonian politics is put forth precisely at the moment in which is operated the displacement of the accent towards a philosophy of life. As the concept of transindividuality disappears from the manuscripts posterior to the theses, the question is even more pressing. How can one comprehend this centrality of the theme of life, whereas that of man and its modes of being in the world would seem to be privileged in the theses? To which extent does this displacement of accent lead Simondon to abandon the political reflection proposed in the theses towards a biological anthropology that, one may ask, would flirt with the sociobiology program of the 1970s? This paper provides some elements to answer these two questions. (shrink)

Introduction Dans ses Essais philosophiques, Hans Jonas rattache son questionnement sur la technologie moderne à une perspective de philosophie morale. L’introduction du recueil est en effet pour lui l’occasion de revenir sur l’ensemble de son parcours intellectuel, et de préciser dans quel contexte son « attention philosophique»s’est portée sur le « défi moral de la technologie moderne ». Abandonnant l’optimisme un peu naïf qu’il confesse avoir nourri à l’égard des possibilités de la techn...

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann’s complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler’s model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon’s notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

Depuis une vingtaine d’années, le concept de « médecine personnalisée » désigne la possibilité d’adapter finement les diagnostics et thérapies au profil biologique, en particulier génétique, de chaque patient·e. L’article traite d’un aspect spécifique de la médecine personnalisée, celui du statut qu’y acquiert « l’environnement ». Il est unanimement admis que les gènes n’expliquent qu’un faible pourcentage des phénotypes pathologiques, l’environnement en constituant le principal facteur explicatif. Les efforts pour identifier et caractériser ces facteurs environnementaux sont aujourd’hui rassemblés sous une (...) nouvelle étiquette, l’ exposomique. Elle connaît deux orientations. L’une conduit à une vision industrielle, orientée vers la recherche de cibles susceptibles d’intervention technique. L’autre vise la critique des choix politiques et sociaux en matière de santé publique. L’article porte sur cette croisée des chemins dans la manière d’appréhender les rapports entre santé et environnement. (shrink)

La conception américaine de la convergence technologique, promue par le programme NBIC, est orientée vers la recherche d’une intégration de tous les domaines du réel dans la représentation unitaire d’un monde constitué de systèmes hiérarchiques complexes et couplés entre eux. Il s’agit par conséquent d’une vision totalisante, témoignant d’un idéal de contrôle et de maîtrise que rien ne paraît devoir limiter. Les Grecs avaient un...

La conception américaine de la convergence technologique, promue par le programme NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno), est orientée vers la recherche d’une intégration de tous les domaines du réel (la nature, la vie, l’esprit, la société) dans la représentation unitaire d’un monde constitué de systèmes hiérarchiques complexes et couplés entre eux. Il s’agit par conséquent d’une vision totalisante, témoignant d’un idéal de contrôle et de maîtrise que rien ne paraît devoir limiter. Les Grecs avaient un...

Simondon situou o conjunto de seus trabalhos sob o signo de uma confrontação entre a filosofia e as ciências humanas. Partindo da constatação de que as ciências humanas de sua época são insuficientemente unificadas e que elas perdem a realidade do homem concreto e completo, ele quer propor uma filosofia da individuação humana que possa renovar os saberes sobre o homem. Esta filosofia da individuação se apresenta como um esforço para casar estreitamente duas dimensões da realidade humana que são habitualmente (...) tratadas separadamente: as formas de organização social de um lado, os modos de confrontação à matéria do outro. Em suma, o social e o técnico. Na capacidade de pensar conjuntamente estas duas dimensões, do social e do técnico, lança-se, segundo Simondon, a possibilidade de propor um novo humanismo à altura dos desafios contemporâneos. (shrink)

La pensée technique peut-elle être l’occasion d’un renouveau de la réflexion transcendantale, ou bien est-elle vouée à demeurer tributaire du « préjugé anthropologique » dont Foucault a repéré la mise en place au XIXe siècle avec la formation des sciences humaines, et qui a eu pour conséquence précisément la dissolution du transcendantal dans l’empirique? Cet article opte résolument pour la première solution, et examine les approches qui vont dans ce sens en refusant de penser les techniques à partir de la (...) finitude anthropologique. (shrink)

For the last twenty years, the philosophy of technology has firmly taken an “empirical turn” and has been strongly pervaded with Science and Technology Studies (STS) lessons, focusing on the social consistency of technical beings. In this context, Simondon’s approach to technology may appear a bit dated. A major issue of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (MEOT) is indeed to theorize technology beyond any reference to social commitments: Simondon distinguishes “pure technicity,” amenable to rational analysis, from “psychosocial (...) overdeterminations” that contaminate technical objects with exogenous concerns. Thus, Simondon may prove behind the times when he claims to analyze technology as a non-social realm. This article intends to demonstrate that Simondon can nevertheless fruitfully feed current debates related to technological developments. More precisely, the difference between several concepts of technological objects in MEOT proves to be of major interest for clarifying current issues related, in particular, to ethics. (shrink)

For the last twenty years, the philosophy of technology has firmly taken an “empirical turn” and has been strongly pervaded with Science and Technology Studies lessons, focusing on the social consistency of technical beings. In this context, Simondon’s approach to technology may appear a bit dated. A major issue of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects is indeed to theorize technology beyond any reference to social commitments: Simondon distinguishes “pure technicity,” amenable to rational analysis, from “psychosocial overdeterminations” that (...) contaminate technical objects with exogenous concerns. Thus, Simondon may prove behind the times when he claims to analyze technology as a non-social realm. This article intends to demonstrate that Simondon can nevertheless fruitfully feed current debates related to technological developments. More precisely, the difference between several concepts of technological objects in MEOT proves to be of major interest for clarifying current issues related, in particular, to ethics. (shrink)