CONCEPT
Metastability
The thermodynamic concept Simondon generalized into the fundamental condition of all reality prior to individuation — a state that looks like stability but is charged with unresolved potential, poised for transformation at the slightest perturbation.
A supersaturated solution sits clear and still on a laboratory bench, containing more dissolved solute than it can stably hold. It appears at rest. It is not. It is metastable — locally stable but globally unstable, carrying within it the potential for radical reorganization. Drop a seed crystal, and within seconds the entire volume transforms. Simondon took this thermodynamic phenomenon and generalized it into the fundamental ontological claim of his philosophy: before there are individuals — crystals, organisms, minds, societies — there is a pre-individual field that is metastable, charged with tensions richer than any individual configuration could exhaust. Individuation occurs when this field partially resolves its tensions by producing new structures, but the resolution is never complete. The individual carries with it an associated milieu and an unresolved charge of pre-individual reality that drives further becoming.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Classical thermodynamics recognizes two states: stable equilibrium (lowest energy, no tendency to change) and unstable equilibrium