Carbon

Carbon is much more than a chemical element: it is a polymorphic entity with many faces, at once natural, cultural and social. Ranging across ten 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 demonize 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 unrecognizable the earth would be without it. Uncovering the many hidden lives of carbon allows us to view our own with fresh eyes.

Auteur

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent is Professor Emeritus at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Sacha Loeve is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science and Technology at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3.

Contenu

Acknowledgements
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