The centrality of the machine in the thought of Jacques Lafitte

Abstract

Jacques Lafitte occupies an odd place in the philosophy of technology. He was a French engineer who made a significant and conceptually innovative contribution to this field, yet his influence has been elusive and largely ignored until relatively recently. Many of Lafitte’s ideas find echoes in the work of later philosophers (particularly Gilbert Simondon), yet, notably in the case of Simondon, apparently without any direct line of influence. Lafitte placed the machine at the centre of his thinking about technology and articulated various layers of analysis around it; for example, he considered machines in the broader context of an artificial world or “mechanosphere”, which encompassed certain aspects of philosophical anthropology (namely, how to think the human in the context of human–machine relations, in the context of socio-political organizations). In this work we seek to reconstruct Lafitte’s ideas and briefly trace some of their later impact. We identify three dimensions (or theses) in Lafitte’s analysis: epistemological, ontological and anthropological. We argue that the most remarkable fact about Lafitte’s thought is the way it inaugurates, and anticipates, the approach of later currents, not just in the “French tradition”, who also made an effort to integrate machine theory into broader philosophical, anthropological and political aspects, in terms that echo Lafitte’s. In particular, we will focus on Gilbert Simondon and cybernetics.

Máquinas técnicas e información en el pensamiento de Simondon

“…Sin embargo, la comprensión de ese fenómeno no podía desligarse del estudio de los elementos materiales porque "deben esa propiedad a la existencia, en su organización, de órganos o sistemas de órganos diferenciados, más o menos desarrollados, que le permiten percibir esas variaciones y transmitir sus efectos a su sistema transformador central" (LAFITTE, 1972, p. 68). De ahí que la Organología, el estudio de los órganos maquínicos y la evolución en el tiempo (el paso de una rueda a un circuito eléctrico, por caso) es, desde esta perspectiva, un insumo indispensable de la teoría filosófica de las máquinas (STIEGLER, 2020;SANDRONE;LAWLER, 2022). Para Ashby, que diseñó y construyó el homeostato (una máquina reflexiva), en cambio, la Cibernética se preocupa por variables y "le preocupa mucho menos si la variable es la posición de un punto en una rueda o un potencial en un circuito eléctrico" (ASHBY, 1957, p.1).…”

Technical Artefacts and the Problem of Malfunction. A Gradual Approach Towards Malfunction

“…The earliest is by Laffite (Lafitte 1932), who influenced later Simondon, and other early philosophers of technology too (Sandrone, Vaccari, and Lawler 2022;Thibault 2017). The novelty of Lafitte's work was to place machines in the centre of philosophical thought, and treats machines as a type of organized body built by human beings (Lafitte 1932).…”

“…Inspired by the biological tool of taxonomic method, Lafitte offers an analogical typology of machines. In this framework 'machines are seen in organismic terms, under a similar light, and in terms of certain convergences (organizational and energetic aspects, for example), and their articulation in the context of human-machine systems' (Sandrone, Vaccari, and Lawler 2022) (Simondon 2017, 249), and that 'the study of mode of existence of technical objects should be extended by the study of the results of their functioning' (Simondon 2017, 250).…”