Information as Transformation: Ruyer, Simondon, Serres

TY - CHAP

T1 - Information as Transformation

T2 - Ruyer, Simondon, Serres

AU - Woodward, Ashley

PY - 2026/7

Y1 - 2026/7

N2 - It has been well-recognised that cybernetics and its associated information theory influenced the development of structuralism in the human sciences in mid-twentieth Century France. A generation of French thinkers who have come to be known as “poststructuralist” critiqued structuralism, however, for producing a the static and deterministic theory of meaning which seemed unable to explain genesis and change. These thinkers understood information as implicated in the structuralist paradigm, and critiqued it as such. Yet cybernetics and information theory had another reception in France, by philosophers who sought to use the technical theory of information to explain precisely the genesis and change what they also believed structuralism could not account for. These philosophers were working in the tradition of épistémologie, and the structuralism they were responding to was that of the natural, rather than human, sciences. I argue here that we can thus identify “another poststructuralism,” which responded to similar limitations in scientific structualism, and which saw more positive potentials in the notion of information. This chapter will identify the ways in which three such philosophers—Ruyer, Simondon, and Serres—each in their own way developed theories of information as transformation. Each of these philosophers rejected the standard understanding of information as the transmission of a given message from a sender to a reciever, and instead focused on the transformative effects information produces in systems. This led them to theories which exploited the potentials of information theory, but for dynamic and indeterminate ends. The idea of information as trasformation, I argue, is a distinctive feature of the philosophical uptake of cybernetics in France, and constitutes a subterranean tradition of philosophical reflection on information which richly deserves renewed attention in our contemporary context, since it helps us to understand the nature of information in a world which is now, via information technologies, being radically transformed by it.

AB - It has been well-recognised that cybernetics and its associated information theory influenced the development of structuralism in the human sciences in mid-twentieth Century France. A generation of French thinkers who have come to be known as “poststructuralist” critiqued structuralism, however, for producing a the static and deterministic theory of meaning which seemed unable to explain genesis and change. These thinkers understood information as implicated in the structuralist paradigm, and critiqued it as such. Yet cybernetics and information theory had another reception in France, by philosophers who sought to use the technical theory of information to explain precisely the genesis and change what they also believed structuralism could not account for. These philosophers were working in the tradition of épistémologie, and the structuralism they were responding to was that of the natural, rather than human, sciences. I argue here that we can thus identify “another poststructuralism,” which responded to similar limitations in scientific structualism, and which saw more positive potentials in the notion of information. This chapter will identify the ways in which three such philosophers—Ruyer, Simondon, and Serres—each in their own way developed theories of information as transformation. Each of these philosophers rejected the standard understanding of information as the transmission of a given message from a sender to a reciever, and instead focused on the transformative effects information produces in systems. This led them to theories which exploited the potentials of information theory, but for dynamic and indeterminate ends. The idea of information as trasformation, I argue, is a distinctive feature of the philosophical uptake of cybernetics in France, and constitutes a subterranean tradition of philosophical reflection on information which richly deserves renewed attention in our contemporary context, since it helps us to understand the nature of information in a world which is now, via information technologies, being radically transformed by it.

KW - Philosophy of Information

KW - Information

KW - Contemporary French Philosophy

KW - Raymond Ruyer

KW - Gilbert Simondon

KW - Michel Serres

KW - Cybernetics

UR - https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-transformation-in-contemporary-french-philosophy.html

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781399540919

BT - Transformation in Contemporary French Philosophy

A2 - Ingala, Emma

A2 - Ó Fathaigh , Cillian

A2 - Rae, Gavin

PB - Edinburgh University Press

CY - Edinburgh

ER -