Afterword

4. Element and Aggregate

The comparison with Leibniz helps to focus attention on the strong emphasis of Tarde's theory on the elements of reality. What are these elements? At first sight, Tarde (like Leibniz) may seem to offer contradictory answers. For example, he sees individual human beings as both exemplary monadic elements—this is indeed one of the bases of the theory, as already noted—and as composed of numerous elements. The key to resolving these difficulties is to recall the priority of relation. It is not the element itself which is the basis in Tarde's theory but its relation to the social aggregates of which it forms a part. Thus, the emphasis on identifying the elementary components of reality does not require singling out a class of entities which are elements in an absolute sense, although this will generally be possible and useful once the domain of the relation is held fixed, and there need be no contradiction in a single (type of) entity standing in this relation in both directions, being an element while also being composed of elements.

Thus, when Tarde says that the principles of reality are to be found in the domain of the 'infinitesimal', he means this term to be taken literally, in that the elements are smaller than any assignable quantity or entity which can be identified, but also as relative to a particular perspective.¹⁶ In this sense, the elements are whatever exists on the scale smaller than the one which is the current focus of one's attention. '[T]hese ultimate elements which form the final stage of every science ... are ultimate only from the point of view of their particular science' (p. 8). So, for example, if one's interest is in human societies or animal species, the element will be the individual human or animal; if in an organism, the cell; if in material entities, the atom; if in spatiotemporal reality in general, it will be the infinitesimal in the usual sense of the term. The fact that the notion of element does not pick out a privileged stratum of reality independently of a specific perspective is reflected in Tarde's conviction that scientific explanation cannot, in principle, ever find an ultimate reality at which it can rest. The discovery of ever-smaller organisms, he hints, may not come to an end with single-celled animalcules. Similarly, the discovery or theorization of ever more basic building-blocks of matter will not end with the atom, which will itself, sooner or later, be found to have a composite structure.¹⁷

Tarde's ontology of the elementary can thus be seen as a middle way between holistic doctrines of emergent properties, which grant the aggregate properties not present in the elements, and re. ductionisms which identify a class of entities as basic and attempt to construct others from them.¹⁸ He argues strongly and explicitly (against holism) that the element is ontologically prior to the aggregate, but as argued above, pansocial ontology also implies (against reductionism) that the relation between them is prior to either of its terms, as the relation between the individual and society is prior to either as an entity. This priority of the relation over the relata is reflected in the vertiginous opening-up of ever smaller scales beneath whatever stopping point we might have hoped to form the basis of our explanations.

The absence of a real final term to the series also, to some extent, undermines the attempt to domesticate it by thinking in terms of nested levels of reality, of the form atom-molecule-protoplasm-cell-organism-society (although MS does sometimes talk in such terms, particularly ch. VI) and the concomitant tendency to see pansociality itself through the prism of the hierarchy, such that lower levels are societies in progressively more simplified and attenuated ways.¹⁹ Rather than filtering downwards in stages from the paradigmatic case of human persons and societies, the pan-psychologist and pansocial analogies radiate outwards, and illuminate each case anew. The ontological structure induced by the analogy might be compared to the traces of the more perfect radial symmetry of supposedly lower forms which Nature retains beneath the bilateral symmetry evolved for locomotion (ch. IV).²⁰

Thus, despite the priority of element to aggregate, there is a balance of power between the two in each domain of the Tardean universe. To discern this balance within the various scientific theories covering these domains will require some shifts of emphasis. In some cases, Tarde will need to argue against a too strong subordination of elements to structure, as with the biological thought of his time, where the prevailing emphasis on the unity and self-organizing capacity of the organism must be countered with an assertion of the independent viability, in principle, of the elements which constitute it. Edmond Perrier's theories of evolution by aggregation into colonies provide a useful support at this point. Sociology is another example, and an analogous argument forms the core of Tarde's critique of Durkheim. In other cases—and particularly in the case of inorganic nature—the monadologist will be arguing for the presence and relevance of structures which are logically irreducible to the action of mechanical forces on otherwise inert bodies, and which can only be explained by appealing to the capacity of these bodies to enter into relations of association, emulation or competition.²¹

Another, more dynamic, way of seeing this relationship is in terms of difference and identity, or heterogeneity and homogeneity. Tarde argues along Leibnizian lines that numerically distinct monads must also be qualitatively different. Thus, Tarde argues, it must be possible in principle to distinguish any two distinct atoms of the same element (using 'element' here in the conventional sense), even if this cannot be achieved in practice due to the grossness of our instruments. Due to our epistemic and sensory limitations, our experience of the world of aggregates contains sizeable tracts of homogeneity, but the belief that this homogeneity can be read back into the elements arises from an anthropocentric prejudice which will dissolve in the light of a more adequate knowledge, as the indistinct murmur of the forest resolves into the combination of the voices of the individual leaves (p. 45).²² The heterogeneity of the elements underwrites their priority over the aggregate, in the sense that if they were perfectly homogenous, their shared form as expressed in the aggregate would exhaust their being and hence have a good claim, on the grounds of conceptual economy if nothing else, to be considered more basic than the elements.

This heterogeneity is not a mere logical structure, however, but manifests itself determinately in the form of an alternation with homogeneity. That is, Tarde does not simply identify the element with the heterogeneous and the aggregate with the homogenous. On the contrary, the aggregation of elements does not reliably generate homogeneity, and to the extent that it does, this often largely serves to increase heterogeneity again. Thus, heterogeneity and homogeneity, or difference and identity, mutually produce each other in a continually renewed reflection of the fundamental element-aggregate polarity. This mutual implication is not the last word, however. Tarde argues that in any given context, difference will be found to be the first and last term of the series, and in this sense is more fundamental than identity; outside of any such context, no first or last term is to be found, and thus—since identity can more readily be constructed from the aggregation of difference than difference can as the fragmentation of identity, since this fragmentation would be inexplicable except on the basis of the prior difference—the very endlessness of the alternation tends to affirm the priority of difference. (To put this argument another way: because elements can enter into relation, they are distinct; because they are distinct, as Leibniz argues, they are different; because they are different they cannot be perfectly simple, and must therefore have substructure and elements of their own, which will in turn exhibit their own differences.)

Tarde offers two analogies from human societies for the mutually productive relation between difference and identity. One is the progressive standardization of language and culture across a national territory, at the expense of local dialects and ways of life, which serves, by increasing the possibilities for interaction between individuals, to greatly expand their sphere of action and accentuate their individuality. The other is the growth of large authoritarian institutions such as armies, where the homogenization of individuals through coercive power serves to greatly amplify the decisions made by the few individuals who are empowered by the system to give orders. The two images appear contradictory in their implications; when pushed, it seems that Tarde is more committed to the first. His prediction of the terminus of this movement of homogenization in the 'crystalline' perfection of a purely transparent society (p. 62)²³ is intended to evoke not a dystopia of totalitarian surveillance, but on the contrary a vision of emancipation in which the claims of society on the individual dwindle to nothingness, and free association replaces the obligations of social life. Nonetheless, both make the same underlying theoretical point, which is that identity is ultimately for the sake of difference.

Tarde thus seems to (and has been taken to) provide support for the kinds of declarations of which have become standard across much of philosophy and social science over the last half-century, in favour of the particular rather than the general, the local rather than the universal, diversity rather than unity, and so on. However, it is instructive to note what separates MS from these ritualistic invocations, and hence demonstrates its real value in understanding their philosophical consequences. First, the very speculative élan of Tarde's text, and his willingness to make strong empirical predictions regarding, for example, the nature of molecular bonding, constitute a powerful challenge to those affirmations of diversity which remain limited to the conceptual and social domains, and are happy to accept the homogeneity of the domains of biology or physics and the invariability of their laws (and thus hypostasize a division which can never be made watertight, since human beings are also organic and material entities). Second, Tarde avoids a simple inverted reductionism, in which identity would be a mere veil over a reality of diversity. Reality is rather the productive alternation and mutual implication of the two, an alternation within which difference is determinative only in virtue of being more persistent. The priority of heterogeneity, then, licenses neither an uncritical celebration of a supposed liberation of difference from the coercion of identity—which would be only to reinscribe this identity as the unquestionability of a moral precept—nor, in general, any final reconciliation of the two, beyond their mutual conflict and constitution.

Notes

16. We could go one step further here and see the elements as purely differential or functional (this reading is suggested by Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, London, Athlone, 1994, pp. 313-314, and developed in more detail by D. Debaise, ‘Une métaphysique des possessions: Puissances et sociétés chez Gabriel Tarde’, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol. 60, no. 4, 2008, pp. 447- 460, and I. Joseph, ‘Gabriel Tarde: Le monde comme féerie’, Critique, vol. 40, nos. 445/446, 1984, pp. 548-565). However, this reading seems to me to abstract too rapidly away from the role they play in specific contexts, and hence to lose much of what is distinctive in the ontology of MS, particularly regarding the monads’ tendency to universalization (see below).↩
17. Of course, while the biological point has fared less well, the physical point is convincingly borne out by subsequent history. Even today, it is not implausible that the most basic particles currently known, quarks and leptons, may have some composite substructure (models positing such structure have been widely canvassed and explored empirically at the Large Hadron Collider and other sites, although at currently attained energy levels, little confirmation has been forthcoming).↩
18. As already noted, Durkheimian sociology is the paradigm of holism; examples of reductionism in the sociological context might be individualisms of the rational-choice type, and in philosophical ontology the various flavours of physicalism.↩
19. There is reason to think that these hierarchical ontologies are the perennial temptation of monadological thought. They were also more a feature of Tarde’s philosophical surroundings than may appear at first glance; although generally unpalatable to 19th-century tastes in their raw Renaissance-Neoplatonist form, they retained considerable appeal when sublimated into a historical narrative, as in Cournot’s Treatise or, come to that, Hegel.↩
20. This might be described as ‘the lost symmetry of the blastosphere’ (J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, St Albans, Triad Panther, 1979, p. 14).↩
21. That is, on my reading, the apparent ‘reductionism’ or ‘individualism’ of Tarde’s theory is tactical rather than fundamental (although it may appear fundamental in sociological contexts—in the conventional sense of the term—and particularly in the debate with Durkheim). This seems to me a clear differend between sociologically inclined readings such as Latour’s (‘Gabriel Tarde and the end of the social’, cited above) and more philosophical readings such as mine and Alliez’, which complicate the picture of Tarde as an individualist (É. Alliez, ‘Tarde et le problème’, cited above; É. Alliez, ‘The difference and repetition of Gabriel Tarde’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, vol. 5, no. 2, 2004, pp. 49-54). However, Toews sees it as a choice between (meta-)philosophical standpoints (Toews, ‘The renaissance’, cited above).↩
22. A very similar metaphor of the sound of the sea and the waves is a favourite of Leibniz’ (e.g. Discourse on Metaphysics §33; letter to Arnauld, 9 October 1687).↩
23. Tarde here (p. 29) builds on Cournot’s insight that social progress tends to make society ever more predictable and law-governed, like the world of Newtonian physics, such that the transparency of the interactions of simple bodies at the base of the ontological hierarchy resonates with the transparency of social interactions at its summit.↩