Benjamin Saffell
- PhD student
Contact
About
Research Topic: Gilbert Simondon’s natural philosophy
Supervisor: Professor Ian James
Ben completed his undergraduate degree in French and Philosophy at University College London in 2017 with a dissertation on the philosophy of laughter in the work of Stendhal. In 2019 he undertook an MA in French Philosophy and Thought at Kings College London with a dissertation focusing on how the concept of political revolution implies theories of nature and temporality. His current research interests include the history of philosophy, history and philosophy of science, space and time theories, and historical epistemology and ontology in France from the years 1900-1960, with special focus on Simondon, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Bergson. His aim is to bridge the French tradition of philosophy of science and ontology with the anglo-saxon analytic tradition of philosophy.
Beyond his academic research, Ben has worked as a copywriter, editor, tutor, and content writer.
Scholarships and Prizes:
Senior scholarship for academic excellence - Fitzwilliam College 2022-2025
Research
Ben’s PhD project focuses on the natural philosophy of Gilbert Simondon. It explores how Simondon reshapes the investigations of Aristotle’s Physics in a bid to discover the underlying structure of creation in nature (i.e. phenomena of growth, production, and emergence in matter), and what this implies about the structure of nature in general. In doing so, it extracts and develops a theory of space and time from Simondon’s writings, and asks how this theory relates to the history of space-time conceptions, quantum physics, and the concept of cause. Throughout, it grounds Simondon’s investigations in the history of science and the philosophies of Bergson, Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty. It also shows how Simondon’s thought challenges the phenomenological tradition and rivals Heidegger’s ontological investigations. Once these results are worked out, Ben asks how Simondon’s thinking contributes to the contemporary resurgence of natural philosophy, ontology, and the project of biosemiotics. It shows how Simondon works out an independent theory of how meaning is manifest in matter, rivaling both Peirce and von Uexküll’s more familiar accounts.
Teaching and supervision
Ben has taught both first-year and second-year critical theory papers.
Critical Theory Part 1 A
Critical Theory Part II B
Invited talks/Presentations
French Postgraduate Research seminar May 2022
French Postgraduate Research seminar October 2024
Conferences and workshops
AHRC Oxford-Open-Cambridge workshop ‘Translating Entropy’
CRASSH Thinking Surfaces and Neo-Hylomorphism