Abstract:

Patrick Tort demonstrated that, in his 1871 work, Darwin transposed his theory of descent modified by means of natural selection to the civilizational process. However, this 'transition to culture' (Tort, 1985) underwent historical omission because the logic Darwin followed to make this transposition was not correctly understood. This failure in the reception of Darwin's logic has been used to provide a biological argument for Herbert Spencer's ultra-liberal ideology, Francis Galton's eugenics, and Walter Lippman's neoliberalism, which is now hegemonic in international organizations. But how is it that this error, 150 years old and locally corrected in an increasing number of scientific fields, can still reinforce neoliberal ideology instead of highlighting the deleterious consequences of the fundamental error on which this ideology was theorized? Is there a necessity, or a mechanical link, to understand the persistence of neoliberal ideology to the peril of the entire civilization that enables its existence? The purpose of this proposition is to demonstrate how the circular causality that naturally characterizes both cultural evolution and the 'mode of existence of technical objects' (Simondon, 1958) can help answer these questions.

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ORCID : https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0003-2703-8431