Invention's schematism and morphogenetic thought in Paul Valery, Gilbert Simondon and D'Arcy Thompson

Gilbert Simondon has shown that schemata are not a pure product of the imagination, but that they stem from a dialogue with the ``images-objects'' originated in the realm of technique or even in nature, which offers an endless source of dynamic schemata that allow visualizing morphogenetic processes very efficiently. This expansion of Kant's schematism has allowed the French philosopher to propose a new concept of invention that brings to light the schemata present in technical or natural objects and enables us to transfer them from one field of human experience to another. This article proposes an application of his model to a parallel reading of two texts: Paul Valery's L'homme et la coquille (1937) and the essay On Growth and Form (1917), penned by the English zoologist Sir D'Arcy Thompson. Making use of totally different methods -literature in the first case; geometry and physics in the second-, these two works try to clear the morphogenetic schema of the shells. It will be shown that Valery, transferring this schema from the realm of nature to poetry, turns the shells into the pillar of a kind of invention both poetic and intellectual.