From Chaos to Individuality: The Creators of Synergetics and the Concept of Becoming by Gilbert Simondon

Classical approaches that describe the world through stable substances and external determinants prove powerless in the face of the spontaneous emergence of new order and unique individuality. This article offers a breakthrough perspective by examining the remarkable convergence of two independently emerged intellectual traditions in the mid-20th century: scientific synergy with its theory of self-organization and the process philosophy of Gilbert Simondon. The analysis demonstrates how the creators of synergy (Haken, Prigogine) and the French thinker, moving along different paths, arrived at a common ontology of becoming. Their key concepts, such as order parameters, bifurcations, the pre-individual field, and metastability, turn out to be complementary. Together, they form a powerful framework explaining the immanent emergence of qualitatively new phenomena, ranging from physical structures to social institutions, directly from the chaos of potentials and without the involvement of an external designer. At the foundation of the methodology of this article lies an interdisciplinary synthesis and comparative conceptual analysis. The core of the research is the comparative identification of structural analogies and complementarity of the key categories of synergy and Simondon's philosophy. This approach is implemented through parallel reading of texts, contextual interpretation, and the construction of a common conceptual field. The goal of the methodology is not only to compare terms but also to demonstrate their synergy in building a holistic process-ontological model that describes the unified principles of becoming in nature, society, and technology. Therefore, the methodology aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries and create a common language for describing the creativity of complex systems. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to transition from static to process-oriented thinking to comprehend the dynamic world of the Anthropocene era, complex technologies, and systemic crises. The synthesis of synergy and Simondon's philosophy offers an adequate toolkit for analyzing crises, transformations, and the creative assembly of the new at the intersection of disciplines. The novelty lies in the systematic identification of the conceptual kinship between post-classical science and marginal philosophical tradition, which has not been comprehensively examined before. The article reveals the joint heuristic potential of these approaches, constructing a unified semantic field for describing becoming and expanding the boundaries of understanding self-organization from nature to society and technology. This synthetic view creates a foundation for fundamentally new research into creativity and adaptability in unstable environments.