Accueil
"The problem of human progress cannot be posed unless one
takes into account the entire system of activity and existence constituted by what man produces and what man is.
Consideration of what man produces (language, technics) does not
permit evaluation of human progress, nor prediction of its law of
development as a function of time, because attention is then solely
directed towards the objective concretization of human activity. For
this reason, as long as one considers only objective concretization, one
has no criterion to enable one to distinguish between one system of
concretization and another as the sole sign and valid medium of human
progress. It has proved possible to identify the progress of language in
all its forms with human progress, as classical humanism has done.
Similarly it has been possible to identify technical progress in all its
forms with human progress. If you do make this identifi cation, which
we think reductive, you will then fi nd that human progress has a limited
temporal evolution and foresee by analogy that technical progress will
describe a sigmoid curve,1 as in the case of linguistic progress.
However, even if one wanted to evaluate human progress on the
grounds of objective concretization alone, it would be imperative to
consider the series of possible concretizations as progress, not such
and such an objective concretization, which is in itself self-limiting.
That linguistic and technical progress share internal processes of
in hibition which gives their development the form of a sigmoid curve
when regarded as a function of time is hardly doubtful in the case of
language, and is perhaps also true in the technical domain. But human
progress consists in the way man, having pushed the possibilities of
language to the point of saturation, turns towards technics, and enters
upon a new domain of development. If to us human progress appears
identifi able with technological progress, it is because in our day and
in our civilization human progress is engaged with the develop ment
of technology. Nothing allows us to presume that having brought
tech nical development to saturation, if indeed such saturation can be
achieved, humanity will not fi nd itself engaged in another domain of
progress. Besides, the reduction of the domains of progress that have
been already attempted to only two seems excessive: if the ancient
classical civilizations seem to have achieved the saturation of language
development, those of the medieval period seem to have achieved
the same in religious development. Starting with the Renaissance, the
spirit of technical development fi rst sought the spirit of develop ment
in the ancient example of the development of language, but then
distanced itself from it. The Renaissance was effectively fi rst a new
phase, short and intense, of linguistic development, before becom ing
an introduction to the phase of technological progress in which we live.
The Reformation, between religious and technical phases, manifests
the introduction of the power of linguistic progress, inspired by ancient
classicism, into religious becoming. Likewise, at the end of the ancient
world, one can see new forces of progress, essentially religious and
ethical, applied to promoting the most highly elaborated phase of the development of language, in the form of the ethico-religious philosophies in full expansion, Stoicism and Gnosticism. Thus there exist
not only a succession of domains where development creates object ive
concretizations – language, religion, technology – but there also exist
durable overlappings between these domains, manifesting a pursuit
of universality.
Nonetheless succession, or even overlapping, of successive stages
does not signify progress. If the linguistic phase, the religious phase, the
technical phase, and all those other phases of human activity past and
future were self-limiting and ignorant of each other without inter communication, humanity would be called to live each successive ven ture
to no avail, until the saturation and abandonment of each of them. And
one might then speak of the progress of language, of religion, or of
tech nology, but not of human progress. Indeed, what these success ive
phases of objective concretization have in common is not the content
of that concretization: pontifi cal power cares as little for Greek theatre
as radar cares for the cathedral. It is man who is common, man as
the motor and promoter of concretization, and man as the creature
in whom objective concretization resonates, that is to say, man as
agent and as patient. Between the objective concretizations of each
self-limiting cycle of progress and man there exists a bond of reciprocal
causality. In each cycle of progress, man forms a system with what he
constitutes, and this system is far from being saturated. It is not the
sum of human possibility that is refl ected in objective concretizations,
language, religion, technology. Thus we can say that there is human
progress only if, when passing from one self-limiting cycle to the next,
man increases the part of himself which is engaged in the system he
forms with the objective concretization. There is progress if the system
man–religion is endowed with more internal resonance than the system
man–language, and if the man–technology system is endowed with a
greater internal resonance than the system man–religion.
Certainly this is a very delicate question, for it is here that there
appears the effective role of man taking consciousness of the develop ment process, man who forms part of the system in which this
process unfurls. There are undoubtedly aspects of automatism in
every development, and hypertrophy of automatism coincides with
the end of evolution, and with the saturation that concludes each
process of development. Such was the state of language at the close
of the ancient world: it became purely a matter for grammarians and
formalist logicians seeking etymological rectitude in naming. Surely, a
grammar or a formal logic does not refl ect man, or at the least refl ects
only the smallest part of man, one that should not be infl ated. All the
same, in its classicism, the phase of linguistic development at its
apogee was charged with more hope; at the time of the Sophists and
of the Panegyric Discourse,
2 language, conceived as the repository
of knowledge, appeared as the foundation for a “perpetual eulogy”
of humanity. Such too was religion in its ascendant phase, with its
universal ecumenical inspiration. It ended nonetheless in that rigorous administration of thought and action which no longer refl ected the power
of human progress. To put it another way, after a leap imbued with the
power of universality manifesting a high degree of internal reson ance
in the system formed by man and his language, or man and his religion,
there comes a closure, a progressive saturation of the autonomous
system of objective concretization, to the same degree reducing the
system’s internal resonance, initially much vaster, formed by man and
the objective concretization. The real center of systematization shifts.
At fi rst it is to be found between man and the objective concretization.
Little by little, it is the objective concretization alone which constitutes
the system. Man is ex-centered, the concretization mechanizes and
automates itself; language becomes grammar and religion theology.
Will technology become industry as language became grammar
and religion theology? It is possible, but there is no necessity, and
one should not confuse the three cases. In fact, if language became
grammar, it was because from the beginning the share of human reality
translatable into language was too weak to establish a valid reciprocity
between man and the growing system of language. It required privileged
situations to instigate this reciprocity, the condition for the adequacy
[French: adéquation] of language to man: such were the ancient
democracies like Athens. But language, more or less adequate to the
life of an ancient city-state, was deeply insufficient for the geographical
dimensions and forms of exchange of an empire. The humanism of
language was of short duration; in our times it subsists artifi cially in
very small human groups with no capacity for constructive expansion.
As for religion, it proved adequate to the geographical dimension of
empires, covering areas as big as continents, and far larger than the
ancient city-state, all the while cementing different social classes,
even penetrating into castes. The current regression of religion is
manifest in the loss of its universal geographic power and its defensive
withdrawal into limited human groups, recalling that of the humanist
culture founded on language which found refuge among the literati.
If technology becomes industry and takes defensive refuge in a new
feudalism of technicians, researchers, and administrators, it will evolve
like language and religion towards closure, centering on itself instead
of continuing to form, with man, an ensemble in process of becoming.
Yet we need to note that the claim to universality was more justifi ed in
religion than in language, in the sense that the capacity for continual
progression across diversity demonstrated much greater expansion in
the religions. Religion, in effect, concerns a more primitive reality, less
localized, somehow more natural for man than that to which language
addresses itself. Religion is more implicit than language, closer to the
basics, less civilized, therefore less limited to the city-state. Technology
is even more primitive than religion: it connects with the elaboration and
satisfaction of biological desires themselves. It can therefore intervene
as a link creating ensembles between the people of different groups
or between people and the world, in circumstances far less tightly
limited than those required for the full use of language or full religious communication. The impression of a fall into primitivism, into vulgarity,
which we feel at the passage from religion to technology, the Ancients
felt watching the most perfect monuments of language abandoned in
favor of a religious upsurge which they judged vulgar, destructive and
filled with the seeds of barbarism.
Yet this step-by-step descent towards primitivism and materiality is a
condition of universality: a language is perfect when it is congruent with
the polity that is reflected in it; a religion is perfect when it achieves the
dimensions of a continent whose diverse ethnicities are at the same
level of civilization. Technology alone is absolutely universalizable,
because that part of man that resonates with it is so primitive, so close
to the conditions for life, that every man possesses it in himself. Thus
there is at least the chance that the seeds of the decentering of man,
and thence of the alienation of the objective concretizations which he
produces, may be feebler in technology than in language and religion.
All the same, the internal resonance of the systemic man–technology
ensemble will not be secured so long as man is not known technologic ally, such that he becomes homogenous with the technological
object. The threshold of non-decentering, and thus of non-alienation,
will only be crossed if man intervenes in technical activity in the dual
role of operator and object of the operation. In the current state of
technical development, man intervenes above all else as operator.
Admittedly he is also a consumer, but only after the technological
object has been produced. Man is very rarely, as man, that on which
the tech no logical operation is carried out. Most often, it is only in rare,
serious and dangerous or destructive cases that man is the direct
object of technical operations, as in surgery, war, or ethnic or political
strug gles: such activity is conservative or destructive and degrading, not
instigating. Surgery, warfare, and psychological action do not construct
man: they do not institute a positive reaction through the medium of
technicity. So far, there has been no solid relation of interiority between
the techniques of action on things and techniques of action on people.
In the best cases, techniques acting on human beings merely replace
the role previously devolved to language (political struggle) or religion
(psychoanalysis). Technology would have the opportunity to prime a nonsigmoid process of development if it could effectively and completely
replace the activities of language and religion. Since, at present, there
exists no a metrology applied to humans, nor a human energetics,
the unity of techniques devoted to humanity does not exist, and no
genuine continuing relation is possible between these techniques and
those directed towards things. The various techniques devoted to things
appeared when science (in this case Physics and Chemistry) provided
the foundations of a true science of measurement. Such a science,
foundational to a scientifi c measurement applicable to humans, does
not yet exist in any stable fashion in the domain of living organisms.
It therefore seems possible to foresee that technological progress
will not always preserve the explosive aspect which it manifests in
the domain of objective concretization. Moreover we should consider more moderately the repercussions of this progress in everyday life.
Here the pace is less than explosive: lighting, furniture, food, transport
all change, but slowly. And, if industry changes, agriculture in our
regions is a domain where technological progress is far from having
assumed an explosive pace. It would be wrong to confuse technical
progress, of value to vast groups of human beings, with the exceptional
results achieved in the specialist milieu of scientifi c technology. The
technical object increasingly requires a technological milieu in order
to exist. So machines like drills and grinders cannot be employed in
a workshop without risking silicosis in their operators. New machines
cannot simply break in: the artisanal milieu must be transformed into
an industrial milieu, requiring energy supplies, automation, and remote
control, not to mention human and economic conditions, which make
the transformation even slower. Often enough the introduction of an
isolated machine, whose performance contrasts with those of other
machines and the possibilities of the surroundings, gives a spectacular
impression of the abstract notion of possible progress, whereas, if
the whole ensemble is modifi ed homogeneously, this appearance of
explosive pace is erased. The slow speed of real progress, in the very
domain of objective concretizations, means that technical progress
is already tied to social conditions. The inhibiting forces which could
otherwise retard it are already operating, but they do not stop it. On
may then surmise that, because of this slowness, technical progress will
not suddenly assume an explosive pace, because regulatory conditions
already exist, and the exploitable riches of energy and raw materials are
considerable. According to the journal Prospective (whose fi rst number
has just come out), the possibilities for long-term development do not
justify an attitude inspired by Malthusianism.
If technical progress is to be considered as human progress, it will
have to involve reciprocity between man and objective concretizations.
This means initially that there must be homogeneity between the
different domains of technical development, and an exchange of their
determinations. Progress assumes an explosive pace when it is already
in its origins a fragmented progress, fulfi lling itself in sharply separate
domains: the more fragmented its condition, the less it is human progress. Such is the case of the technical progress accomplished in a
matter of years in oil and gas prospecting. In France, Lacq gas crosses
underdeveloped areas, bringing them no profi t, heading off for sale
far away in already industrialized areas. The gas discovered by oilmen
in the Hassi-Messaoud region fl ames like a torch in the sky while, in
Algeria, men kill one another and children die of hunger beside wasted
fi elds and cold hearths. Technological progress would be much more
profoundly human progress if it was already progress of all technologies,
including agriculture, which in terms of excellence is, in every sense of
the word, the poor relation.
Such progress would therefore be much slower at each point and
much more profound in its totality, thus much more truly progress.
Trans forming all the conditions of human life, augmenting the exchange of causality between what man produces and what he is, true technical
progress might be considered as implying human progress if it has a
network structure, whose mesh is human reality; but then it would no
longer be solely an ensemble of objective concretizations. For technical
progress to be self-regulating, it must be a progress of the whole; which
means that each domain of human activity employing techniques must
be in representative and normative communication with every other
domain; this progress would be of an organic type, and would form part
of the specific evolution of man.
In addition, even if such a conclusion might appear illusory, it must be said that human progress cannot identify itself with any single crisis in the progress of language, religion or pure technology, but only with that which, in each of these crises of progress, can be passed on to other crises of progress in the form of refl exive thought. In effect, this inner resonance of the ensemble formed by the objective concretization and man is thought, and can be transposed. Only philosophical thought is common to progress in language, progress in religion and progress in technology. Refl exivity of thought is the conscious form of the internal resonance formed by man and the objective concretiza tion ; it is this thought that ensures continuity between successive phases of progress, and it is thought alone which can maintain the pre occupation with totality, thus ensuring that the decentering of man, in parallel with the alienation of the objective concretization, do not occur. In our times, refl exive thought must devote itself particularly to guiding human technical activity in its relation to man, because it is in this domain that there exists the greatest danger of alienation, and where we find that absence of structure which stops the technological progress practiced in objective concretization from becoming an integral part of human progress, by forming a system with man. The question of the limits of human progress cannot be posed without also posing the question of the limits of thought, because it is thought that appears as the principal repository of evolutionary potential in the human species."
-Gilbert Simondon, "The Limits of Human Progress: A Critical Study", Cultural Politics, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2010, pp.229–236. Première publication dans la Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1959.
takes into account the entire system of activity and existence constituted by what man produces and what man is.
Consideration of what man produces (language, technics) does not
permit evaluation of human progress, nor prediction of its law of
development as a function of time, because attention is then solely
directed towards the objective concretization of human activity. For
this reason, as long as one considers only objective concretization, one
has no criterion to enable one to distinguish between one system of
concretization and another as the sole sign and valid medium of human
progress. It has proved possible to identify the progress of language in
all its forms with human progress, as classical humanism has done.
Similarly it has been possible to identify technical progress in all its
forms with human progress. If you do make this identifi cation, which
we think reductive, you will then fi nd that human progress has a limited
temporal evolution and foresee by analogy that technical progress will
describe a sigmoid curve,1 as in the case of linguistic progress.
However, even if one wanted to evaluate human progress on the
grounds of objective concretization alone, it would be imperative to
consider the series of possible concretizations as progress, not such
and such an objective concretization, which is in itself self-limiting.
That linguistic and technical progress share internal processes of
in hibition which gives their development the form of a sigmoid curve
when regarded as a function of time is hardly doubtful in the case of
language, and is perhaps also true in the technical domain. But human
progress consists in the way man, having pushed the possibilities of
language to the point of saturation, turns towards technics, and enters
upon a new domain of development. If to us human progress appears
identifi able with technological progress, it is because in our day and
in our civilization human progress is engaged with the develop ment
of technology. Nothing allows us to presume that having brought
tech nical development to saturation, if indeed such saturation can be
achieved, humanity will not fi nd itself engaged in another domain of
progress. Besides, the reduction of the domains of progress that have
been already attempted to only two seems excessive: if the ancient
classical civilizations seem to have achieved the saturation of language
development, those of the medieval period seem to have achieved
the same in religious development. Starting with the Renaissance, the
spirit of technical development fi rst sought the spirit of develop ment
in the ancient example of the development of language, but then
distanced itself from it. The Renaissance was effectively fi rst a new
phase, short and intense, of linguistic development, before becom ing
an introduction to the phase of technological progress in which we live.
The Reformation, between religious and technical phases, manifests
the introduction of the power of linguistic progress, inspired by ancient
classicism, into religious becoming. Likewise, at the end of the ancient
world, one can see new forces of progress, essentially religious and
ethical, applied to promoting the most highly elaborated phase of the development of language, in the form of the ethico-religious philosophies in full expansion, Stoicism and Gnosticism. Thus there exist
not only a succession of domains where development creates object ive
concretizations – language, religion, technology – but there also exist
durable overlappings between these domains, manifesting a pursuit
of universality.
Nonetheless succession, or even overlapping, of successive stages
does not signify progress. If the linguistic phase, the religious phase, the
technical phase, and all those other phases of human activity past and
future were self-limiting and ignorant of each other without inter communication, humanity would be called to live each successive ven ture
to no avail, until the saturation and abandonment of each of them. And
one might then speak of the progress of language, of religion, or of
tech nology, but not of human progress. Indeed, what these success ive
phases of objective concretization have in common is not the content
of that concretization: pontifi cal power cares as little for Greek theatre
as radar cares for the cathedral. It is man who is common, man as
the motor and promoter of concretization, and man as the creature
in whom objective concretization resonates, that is to say, man as
agent and as patient. Between the objective concretizations of each
self-limiting cycle of progress and man there exists a bond of reciprocal
causality. In each cycle of progress, man forms a system with what he
constitutes, and this system is far from being saturated. It is not the
sum of human possibility that is refl ected in objective concretizations,
language, religion, technology. Thus we can say that there is human
progress only if, when passing from one self-limiting cycle to the next,
man increases the part of himself which is engaged in the system he
forms with the objective concretization. There is progress if the system
man–religion is endowed with more internal resonance than the system
man–language, and if the man–technology system is endowed with a
greater internal resonance than the system man–religion.
Certainly this is a very delicate question, for it is here that there
appears the effective role of man taking consciousness of the develop ment process, man who forms part of the system in which this
process unfurls. There are undoubtedly aspects of automatism in
every development, and hypertrophy of automatism coincides with
the end of evolution, and with the saturation that concludes each
process of development. Such was the state of language at the close
of the ancient world: it became purely a matter for grammarians and
formalist logicians seeking etymological rectitude in naming. Surely, a
grammar or a formal logic does not refl ect man, or at the least refl ects
only the smallest part of man, one that should not be infl ated. All the
same, in its classicism, the phase of linguistic development at its
apogee was charged with more hope; at the time of the Sophists and
of the Panegyric Discourse,
2 language, conceived as the repository
of knowledge, appeared as the foundation for a “perpetual eulogy”
of humanity. Such too was religion in its ascendant phase, with its
universal ecumenical inspiration. It ended nonetheless in that rigorous administration of thought and action which no longer refl ected the power
of human progress. To put it another way, after a leap imbued with the
power of universality manifesting a high degree of internal reson ance
in the system formed by man and his language, or man and his religion,
there comes a closure, a progressive saturation of the autonomous
system of objective concretization, to the same degree reducing the
system’s internal resonance, initially much vaster, formed by man and
the objective concretization. The real center of systematization shifts.
At fi rst it is to be found between man and the objective concretization.
Little by little, it is the objective concretization alone which constitutes
the system. Man is ex-centered, the concretization mechanizes and
automates itself; language becomes grammar and religion theology.
Will technology become industry as language became grammar
and religion theology? It is possible, but there is no necessity, and
one should not confuse the three cases. In fact, if language became
grammar, it was because from the beginning the share of human reality
translatable into language was too weak to establish a valid reciprocity
between man and the growing system of language. It required privileged
situations to instigate this reciprocity, the condition for the adequacy
[French: adéquation] of language to man: such were the ancient
democracies like Athens. But language, more or less adequate to the
life of an ancient city-state, was deeply insufficient for the geographical
dimensions and forms of exchange of an empire. The humanism of
language was of short duration; in our times it subsists artifi cially in
very small human groups with no capacity for constructive expansion.
As for religion, it proved adequate to the geographical dimension of
empires, covering areas as big as continents, and far larger than the
ancient city-state, all the while cementing different social classes,
even penetrating into castes. The current regression of religion is
manifest in the loss of its universal geographic power and its defensive
withdrawal into limited human groups, recalling that of the humanist
culture founded on language which found refuge among the literati.
If technology becomes industry and takes defensive refuge in a new
feudalism of technicians, researchers, and administrators, it will evolve
like language and religion towards closure, centering on itself instead
of continuing to form, with man, an ensemble in process of becoming.
Yet we need to note that the claim to universality was more justifi ed in
religion than in language, in the sense that the capacity for continual
progression across diversity demonstrated much greater expansion in
the religions. Religion, in effect, concerns a more primitive reality, less
localized, somehow more natural for man than that to which language
addresses itself. Religion is more implicit than language, closer to the
basics, less civilized, therefore less limited to the city-state. Technology
is even more primitive than religion: it connects with the elaboration and
satisfaction of biological desires themselves. It can therefore intervene
as a link creating ensembles between the people of different groups
or between people and the world, in circumstances far less tightly
limited than those required for the full use of language or full religious communication. The impression of a fall into primitivism, into vulgarity,
which we feel at the passage from religion to technology, the Ancients
felt watching the most perfect monuments of language abandoned in
favor of a religious upsurge which they judged vulgar, destructive and
filled with the seeds of barbarism.
Yet this step-by-step descent towards primitivism and materiality is a
condition of universality: a language is perfect when it is congruent with
the polity that is reflected in it; a religion is perfect when it achieves the
dimensions of a continent whose diverse ethnicities are at the same
level of civilization. Technology alone is absolutely universalizable,
because that part of man that resonates with it is so primitive, so close
to the conditions for life, that every man possesses it in himself. Thus
there is at least the chance that the seeds of the decentering of man,
and thence of the alienation of the objective concretizations which he
produces, may be feebler in technology than in language and religion.
All the same, the internal resonance of the systemic man–technology
ensemble will not be secured so long as man is not known technologic ally, such that he becomes homogenous with the technological
object. The threshold of non-decentering, and thus of non-alienation,
will only be crossed if man intervenes in technical activity in the dual
role of operator and object of the operation. In the current state of
technical development, man intervenes above all else as operator.
Admittedly he is also a consumer, but only after the technological
object has been produced. Man is very rarely, as man, that on which
the tech no logical operation is carried out. Most often, it is only in rare,
serious and dangerous or destructive cases that man is the direct
object of technical operations, as in surgery, war, or ethnic or political
strug gles: such activity is conservative or destructive and degrading, not
instigating. Surgery, warfare, and psychological action do not construct
man: they do not institute a positive reaction through the medium of
technicity. So far, there has been no solid relation of interiority between
the techniques of action on things and techniques of action on people.
In the best cases, techniques acting on human beings merely replace
the role previously devolved to language (political struggle) or religion
(psychoanalysis). Technology would have the opportunity to prime a nonsigmoid process of development if it could effectively and completely
replace the activities of language and religion. Since, at present, there
exists no a metrology applied to humans, nor a human energetics,
the unity of techniques devoted to humanity does not exist, and no
genuine continuing relation is possible between these techniques and
those directed towards things. The various techniques devoted to things
appeared when science (in this case Physics and Chemistry) provided
the foundations of a true science of measurement. Such a science,
foundational to a scientifi c measurement applicable to humans, does
not yet exist in any stable fashion in the domain of living organisms.
It therefore seems possible to foresee that technological progress
will not always preserve the explosive aspect which it manifests in
the domain of objective concretization. Moreover we should consider more moderately the repercussions of this progress in everyday life.
Here the pace is less than explosive: lighting, furniture, food, transport
all change, but slowly. And, if industry changes, agriculture in our
regions is a domain where technological progress is far from having
assumed an explosive pace. It would be wrong to confuse technical
progress, of value to vast groups of human beings, with the exceptional
results achieved in the specialist milieu of scientifi c technology. The
technical object increasingly requires a technological milieu in order
to exist. So machines like drills and grinders cannot be employed in
a workshop without risking silicosis in their operators. New machines
cannot simply break in: the artisanal milieu must be transformed into
an industrial milieu, requiring energy supplies, automation, and remote
control, not to mention human and economic conditions, which make
the transformation even slower. Often enough the introduction of an
isolated machine, whose performance contrasts with those of other
machines and the possibilities of the surroundings, gives a spectacular
impression of the abstract notion of possible progress, whereas, if
the whole ensemble is modifi ed homogeneously, this appearance of
explosive pace is erased. The slow speed of real progress, in the very
domain of objective concretizations, means that technical progress
is already tied to social conditions. The inhibiting forces which could
otherwise retard it are already operating, but they do not stop it. On
may then surmise that, because of this slowness, technical progress will
not suddenly assume an explosive pace, because regulatory conditions
already exist, and the exploitable riches of energy and raw materials are
considerable. According to the journal Prospective (whose fi rst number
has just come out), the possibilities for long-term development do not
justify an attitude inspired by Malthusianism.
If technical progress is to be considered as human progress, it will
have to involve reciprocity between man and objective concretizations.
This means initially that there must be homogeneity between the
different domains of technical development, and an exchange of their
determinations. Progress assumes an explosive pace when it is already
in its origins a fragmented progress, fulfi lling itself in sharply separate
domains: the more fragmented its condition, the less it is human progress. Such is the case of the technical progress accomplished in a
matter of years in oil and gas prospecting. In France, Lacq gas crosses
underdeveloped areas, bringing them no profi t, heading off for sale
far away in already industrialized areas. The gas discovered by oilmen
in the Hassi-Messaoud region fl ames like a torch in the sky while, in
Algeria, men kill one another and children die of hunger beside wasted
fi elds and cold hearths. Technological progress would be much more
profoundly human progress if it was already progress of all technologies,
including agriculture, which in terms of excellence is, in every sense of
the word, the poor relation.
Such progress would therefore be much slower at each point and
much more profound in its totality, thus much more truly progress.
Trans forming all the conditions of human life, augmenting the exchange of causality between what man produces and what he is, true technical
progress might be considered as implying human progress if it has a
network structure, whose mesh is human reality; but then it would no
longer be solely an ensemble of objective concretizations. For technical
progress to be self-regulating, it must be a progress of the whole; which
means that each domain of human activity employing techniques must
be in representative and normative communication with every other
domain; this progress would be of an organic type, and would form part
of the specific evolution of man.
In addition, even if such a conclusion might appear illusory, it must be said that human progress cannot identify itself with any single crisis in the progress of language, religion or pure technology, but only with that which, in each of these crises of progress, can be passed on to other crises of progress in the form of refl exive thought. In effect, this inner resonance of the ensemble formed by the objective concretization and man is thought, and can be transposed. Only philosophical thought is common to progress in language, progress in religion and progress in technology. Refl exivity of thought is the conscious form of the internal resonance formed by man and the objective concretiza tion ; it is this thought that ensures continuity between successive phases of progress, and it is thought alone which can maintain the pre occupation with totality, thus ensuring that the decentering of man, in parallel with the alienation of the objective concretization, do not occur. In our times, refl exive thought must devote itself particularly to guiding human technical activity in its relation to man, because it is in this domain that there exists the greatest danger of alienation, and where we find that absence of structure which stops the technological progress practiced in objective concretization from becoming an integral part of human progress, by forming a system with man. The question of the limits of human progress cannot be posed without also posing the question of the limits of thought, because it is thought that appears as the principal repository of evolutionary potential in the human species."
-Gilbert Simondon, "The Limits of Human Progress: A Critical Study", Cultural Politics, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2010, pp.229–236. Première publication dans la Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1959.
