Metastability

Metastability occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning above all as the ontological condition that makes individuation possible. In Simondon’s foundational treatment, metastability names a state of charged disequilibrium in which potential energies of incompatible orders coexist without yet resolving — a condition richer and more generative than stable equilibrium, which forecloses becoming. Simondon insists that prior philosophical accounts of individuation failed precisely because they assumed being to reside in stable equilibrium; recognising metastability as the authentic ground of pre-individual being reframes the individual not as substance but as the provisional resolution of a tensioned system. The concept carries explanatory weight across physical, biological, and psychic registers: crystals grow because an amorphous milieu is metastable; the living being is defined as that which sustains and prolongs metastable equilibrium through activity; and the ethical subject is one whose normative system incorporates awareness of its own metastability. Siegel and the neurodynamic literature import the term into cognitive neuroscience, where metastable brain states enable flexible reconfiguration of neural networks — a finding that converges with Simondon’s insistence that metastability underwrites adaptability and complexity. Carhart-Harris’s entropic-brain framework approaches the concept from another angle, treating criticality and entropy modulation as neural analogues of metastable thresholds. Across these traditions the term marks the site where order and transformation remain productively undecided.

In the library 18 passages

Individuation has not been able to be adequately thought and described because only a single form of equilibrium was known, namely stable equilibrium; what was unknown was precisely metastable equilibrium; being was implicitly supposed in a state of stable equilibrium; however, stable equilibrium excludes becoming because it c

Simondon’s master claim: the philosophical tradition’s failure to think individuation stems from its ignorance of metastable equilibrium as the authentic ontological ground of becoming.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis

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the individual as transductive reality. By transductive reality, we mean that the individual is neither a substantial being like an element, nor a pure rapport, but the reality of a metastable relation. There is no veritable individual except in a system in which a metastable state occurs.

Simondon defines the individual as transductive — neither substance nor relation alone — grounding individuation exclusively in the occurrence of a metastable state within a tensioned system.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis

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we must replace the notion of stable equilibrium with that of metastable equilibrium, and we must replace the notion of good form with that of information; the system in which the being acts is a universe of metastability; the living being is what maintains, transposes, prolongs, and sustains this metastable equilibrium through its activity.

Simondon argues that both Gestalt ‘good form’ and homeostatic stable equilibrium must be superseded by metastable equilibrium and information as the operative concepts for understanding the living being’s activity.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis

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depending on temperature and pressure conditions, sometimes the crystalline state is stable while the amorphous state is metastable, and sometimes vice versa. The passage from the metastable state to the stable state gives rise to a determinate thermal effect and to a determinate volumetric effect.

Simondon introduces physical metastability through Tammann’s crystallographic theory, establishing that the metastable-to-stable transition is the material paradigm for all individuation.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis

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Metastable brain states allow for the flexible reconfiguration of neural networks while avoiding extreme integrative or segregative brain configurations. … The current study supports the notion that metastability and cognitive flexibility may arise from similar brain configurations.

Siegel imports the concept into developmental neuroscience, citing evidence that metastable brain configurations are the neural substrate of executive-function flexibility and cognitive adaptability.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis

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While the system is in a state of metastable equilibrium, it is able to be modulated by singularities and is the theater of processes of amplification, summation, and communication.

Simondon specifies the functional properties of metastable equilibrium: receptivity to singular information, capacity for amplification, and communicative transduction across scales.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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The ontogenesis of the living being cannot be thought based on the notion of homeostasis alone, i.e. the perpetuation of metastable equilibrium through self-regulations. This representation of metastability could be suitable for describing a fully adult being that would merely maintain itself in existence.

Simondon critiques homeostasis as an insufficient account of metastability, arguing that self-regulation describes only maintenance, not the generative ontogenetic dimension of living being.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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That the system knows its own relativity within itself, that it be formed according to this relativity, that its own metastability be incorporated into its conditions of equilibrium: such is the path according to which the two ethics will have to coincide.

Simondon extends metastability into the ethical domain, proposing that a normative system attains its highest form when it internalises awareness of its own metastability as a constitutive condition.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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the crystal is not yet constituted, the energetic conditions can be considered as exterior to the crystalline germ, whereas the structural conditions are carried by this germ itself … the crystal has grown, it has at least partially incorporated certain amounts of substance that constituted the support of the potential energy of the metastable state while they were amorphous.

Simondon traces how the metastable milieu is progressively incorporated into the growing crystal, demonstrating the dynamic interiorisation of potential energy during individuation.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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the individual corresponds to a certain dimensionality of the real … a reality that corresponds to a certain state of (generally metastable) equilibrium and is founded on a regime of exchanges between the different orders of magnitude.

Simondon characterises the physical individual as an entity constituted by a regime of metastable equilibrium across different orders of magnitude, rejecting absolute substance.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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metastability generally supposes both the presence of two orders of magnitude and the absence of interactive communication between them.

Simondon provides a structural definition: metastability requires the co-presence of two incommensurable orders of magnitude that have not yet entered into communicative relation.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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it is possible based on the discontinuities of conditions to define types that correspond to domains of stability or metastability; then, within these types, it is possible to define particular beings that differ from one another.

Simondon uses the topology of stability and metastability domains to account for the emergence of natural types and the singularity of particular individuals within those types.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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A substance conserves its individuality when it is in the most stable state proportionate to its own energetic conditions … A stable individuality is thus formed when two conditions are met: a certain structure must correspond to a certain energetic state of the system.

Simondon articulates the threshold conditions — structural and energetic — under which metastable potential resolves into stable individuality, distinguishing relative from absolute genesis.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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the absolute genesis of the individuated state is more difficult to define than its relative genesis through the passage from a metastable

Simondon distinguishes absolute from relative genesis of the individual, with the latter defined as the passage from a metastable state to a more stable configuration.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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primary states may exhibit ‘criticality,’ i.e., the property of being poised at a ‘critical’ point in a transition zone between order and disorder where certain phenomena such as power-law scaling appear.

Carhart-Harris proposes neural criticality as the entropic-brain analogue of metastability, situating primary conscious states at the threshold between order and disorder in a manner structurally homologous to Simondon’s pre-individual tension.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014supporting

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the supersaturated solution crystallizes due to its own potentials and according to the chemical species that it holds, not with t

Simondon uses the supersaturated solution as a paradigm case of a metastable system whose resolution is immanently driven by its own internal potentials rather than by external principles.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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individuation takes place in a quantum manner through abrupt leaps, each plateau of individuation being capable of once again relating itself to the following as a pre-individual state of the being.

Simondon describes successive individuations as quantum-like leaps between metastable plateaus, each resolved state becoming the new pre-individual ground for subsequent individuation.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020aside

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Related terms