Carbon
A Biography
1. Edition June 2024
304 Pages, Hardcover
General Reading
Short Description
Carbon is much more than a chemical element: it is a polymorphic entity with many faces, at once natural, cultural and social. Ranging across 10 million different compounds, carbon has as many personas in nature as it has roles in human life on Earth. And yet it rarely makes the headlines as anything other than the villain of our fossil-based economy, feeding an addiction which is driving dangerous levels of consumption and international conflict and which, left unchecked, could lead to our demise as a species. But the impact of CO on climate change only tells part of the story, and to demonise carbon as an element which will bring about the downfall of humanity is to reduce it to a pale shadow of itself.
In this major new history of carbon, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Sacha Loeve show that this omnipresent element is at the root of countless histories and adventures through time, thanks to its extraordinary versatility. Carbon has a long and prestigious CV: its work and achievements extend far beyond the burning of fossil fuels. The fourth most abundant element in the universe and the second most abundant element in the human body, carbon is the chemical basis of all known life. Carbon chemistry has a long history, with applications ranging from jewellery to heating, underpinning developments in metallurgy, textiles, pharmaceuticals, electronics, nanoscience and green technologies.
A biography of carbon transgresses the boundaries between chemical and social existence, between nature and culture, forcing us to abandon the simplified image of carbon as the anti-hero of human civilization and enabling us to see instead the great diversity of carbon's modes of existence. With scientific precision and literary flair, Bensaude-Vincent and Loeve unravel the surprising ways in which carbon has shaped our world, showing how unrecognisable the Earth would be without it. Uncovering the many hidden lives of carbon allows us to view our own with fresh eyes.
Carbon is much more than a chemical element: it is a polymorphic entity with many faces, at once natural, cultural and social. Ranging across 10 million different compounds, carbon has as many personas in nature as it has roles in human life on Earth. And yet it rarely makes the headlines as anything other than the villain of our fossil-based economy, feeding an addiction which is driving dangerous levels of consumption and international conflict and which, left unchecked, could lead to our demise as a species. But the impact of CO on climate change only tells part of the story, and to demonise carbon as an element which will bring about the downfall of humanity is to reduce it to a pale shadow of itself.
In this major new history of carbon, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Sacha Loeve show that this omnipresent element is at the root of countless histories and adventures through time, thanks to its extraordinary versatility. Carbon has a long and prestigious CV: its work and achievements extend far beyond the burning of fossil fuels. The fourth most abundant element in the universe and the second most abundant element in the human body, carbon is the chemical basis of all known life. Carbon chemistry has a long history, with applications ranging from jewellery to heating, underpinning developments in metallurgy, textiles, pharmaceuticals, electronics, nanoscience and green technologies.
A biography of carbon transgresses the boundaries between chemical and social existence, between nature and culture, forcing us to abandon the simplified image of carbon as the anti-hero of human civilization and enabling us to see instead the great diversity of carbon's modes of existence. With scientific precision and literary flair, Bensaude-Vincent and Loeve unravel the surprising ways in which carbon has shaped our world, showing how unrecognisable the Earth would be without it. Uncovering the many hidden lives of carbon allows us to view our own with fresh eyes.
List of Illustrations
Prologue: Why write a biography of carbon?
PART I
The Invention of Carbon
1. Mephitis
A thing with many names
A genius of place
Geomythologies
An elixir of youth
2. An indescribable air
From mephitic air to 'sylvester spirit'
From 'sylvester spirit' to fixed air
From fixed air to carbonic acid
3. Between diamond and coal
The diamond enigma
A creature of nomenclature
Coal's footprint
Word battles
4. An exemplary element
A textbook example
A material abstraction
A metaphysical substance
5. Carbon liberates itself
One among others
Two or three chemistries?
A quartet of elements
An exchange centre
A standard of measurement
6. A relational being
Atomicity
The C-C bond
Asymmetry
Dispositions and affordances
A philosopher's stone
7. Welcome to the nanoworld
Filaments doomed to oblivion
Seeing without discovering
A soccer ball
The nanotube jungle
8. Strategic materials
Nuclear graphite
Graphene as an academic material
A pure surface rich in promises
At the limits of materiality
Unique and generic
PART II
Carbon civilisation
9. Traces, stories and memories
Carbon as writer
Carbon as graphic designer
Diamond engraver and reader
Radiocarbon dating
Carbon archive
10. The resilient rise of fossils
Memories of life on Earth
A carbon liberation movement?
Multiple coals
Prometheus unchained
Scarcity foretold
A hoped-for turnaround
11. The bewitching power of oil
The black gold rush
A capitalist sorcerer
A gift from the Earth
Virtues as traps
12. The age of plastics
Better things for better living... through chemistry
Plastic miracles
Reinforced with carbon
A continent of waste
13. Working towards a more sustainable economy
From black gold to green oil
Towards white carbon?
Universal machine
14. The carbon market
Carbon finance
The new universal standard
A common measure
Why carbon?
Carbon pricing
PART III
Carbon temporalities
15. Carbon cosmogony
In the mists of time
Improbable carbon
Anthropogenic carbon?
Carbon as Earthling!
Multiple cycles
16. Turbulence in the biosphere.
Carbon Redux
Selfish carbon?
A melting pot
Star of the oceans: Emiliana Huxleyi
The potential of soils
17. Rethinking time with carbon
Anthropocene
A grand narrative
The accelerating arrow of time
Disentangling scales
Multiple temporalities.
EPILOGUE. The heteronyms of carbon
Stories of genius
A plurality of modes of existence
Ontography
Who is carbon?
Notes
Index
Sacha Loeve is Associate Professor in Philosophy of science and technology at the University Lyon 3 Jean Moulin.
