Energy/Introduction

Introduction: Energy as a Nomadic Concept

Pourqui certains concepts scientifiques connaissent-ils une vie nomade, d'une science à l'autre? Que deviennent-ils lorsqu'ils passent d'une science "dure" à une science '"molle'", ou inversement? Conservent-ils le même sens? Contribuent-ils à unifier le champ des sciences? Ou bien en compliquent-ils plus le relief? - Isabelle Stengers, 1987

(Translation of above by Manuela Rossini: How is it that certain scientific concepts lead a nomadic life, from one science to the next? What do they become as they travel from a '"hard" science to a "soft" science, or viceversa? Does their meaning stay the same? Do they help to unify the field of the sciences? Or do they rather complicate the picture?)

While I write this Introduction, the meltdown of the three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011 is apparently still not under control and made new energy-saving technologies the centre of attention at CEATEC, Japan's largest information technology and electronics fair, in October of the same year. Hope rises among environmentally-conscious scientists that better management of the island’s many forests and policy reinforcements will allow the sustainable use of woody biomass (Sasaki et al., 2011) or any other natural resource freely available (as documented by the non-profit organization Japan for Sustainability or the German Energy Rich Japan Project) in order to generate the 858.5 billion kWh the Japanese population currently consumes per year. The techno-natural disaster has also recharged the empty batteries of anti-nuclear movements, not only in Japan, and fuelled pronunciamentos by political parties of almost all creeds for an ‚energy turn’ world-wide. (Though today, June 16, 2012, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has forced the restarting of the reactors at Oi after a shut-down of all the nuclear power plants, and also in my home country, Switzerland, higher than expected costs have blackened any green optimism and political will for a quick nuclear exit.) 

In order to write the above paragraph, dozens of google clicks were needed, each spending an amount of energy equivalent to letting a light bulb of 60 watts burn for 18 seconds. And many dozens of clicks more to search for open-access articles and other information to compile this collection. Like all digital practices and social media, the Living Books about Life project depends upon energy-intensive infrastructures, partly coal-powered data centres (see dirty-data report by Greenpeace) and an equally energy-intensive cooling system for servers that never sleep. But this is not a book about renewable energies and how to turn the land of the rising sun into the Kingdom of Solar Energy or joining hands with Cheeky Cloud and making windmills turn round and round while unfriending Facebook’s Dirty Coal as promoted by the Greenpeace compaign and video. Moralistic finger-pointing at the big Western cooperations, greedy capitalists or, worse perhaps, nature as an evil force will not do any longer - if ever it did. An energetic (r)evolution is depending on a climate change on all levels of the material, social and cultural fabric of the world, including the micro-level of the individual and his or her life-style, 'energy mentality' and values, and not just on a technological fix and a call for new legislation. A more connected and holistic ecological approach, moreover, entails not only a political and ethical awareness that energy use, capitalism, imperialism and anthropocentrism are hard-wired into each other but also that reactors, tsunamis, electricity, transmission cables, among other 'things', have each an agency of their own, affecting and being affected by each of the other aforementioned elements (cf. Chapter 2 on the North American blackout of August 2003 in Bennett, 2010: 20-38).

This book is hence not exclusively about the E(nergy) of scientific equations such as Einstein's famous formula E = mc². Nor primarily about energy as an un/limited resource and consumer good. It is, rather, a book about energy as a nomadic concept and - on the basis of its defining capacity to do work - a material-semiotic agent of trans/formation shaping not only 'technologies, politics, societies and cultural world views' (Möllers & Zachmann, 2012: Introduction) but each and every life. Travelling through time, a concept has a history and different names in different periods. It will therefore be useful to consider earlier terms like vis viva (Leibniz) or élan vital (Bergson) and non-Western notions such as the Chinese principle qì as well as  19th-century artistic expressions of vibratory forces as residual elements of the conceptual frame of what we mean by 'energy' in its broadest sense today. Tapping into energy as both an idea and a dynamic substance, or intensive flow and affect rather, I hope to add another atom to Vicki Kirby's recent 'quantum-anthropological' proposition of a 'meta-physis of life at large' (2011). More broadly and theoretically speaking, the aim is to contribute to the project of critical posthumanism. Or call it a modest proposal to embrace a cosmopolitics (Stengers, 2010 and 2011) in order to sustain the good vibrations of all that matters.

Energy Forms: TransForming Dynamics

In the era of classical thermodynamics, the cultural allegory of energy forms proceeded from the universal moralization of heat into the relativistic decoding of light, preparing both matter and energy for further metamorphoses into the chaotic orders of information. - Bruce Clarke, 2001

As a cosmopolitan nomad, energy takes a ride in many forms and media of transportation to travel (in)between subatomic particles, neurons, bodies, societies, cultures, stories and disciplines. Having no passport, it belongs to none of the countries it traverses, yet leaves its footprints everywhere while also being trans/formed by what it encounters and interacts with - or, more appropriately, intra-acts with: material agents do not meet as already constituted and discrete entities, usually separated in space and time, but only emerge as seemingly individual forms through and from their mutual quantum entanglements in spacetime (Barad, 2010; see also Barad, 2007). Energy is no exception in this matter. The online Encyclopedia of Human Thermodynamics (see Energy) explains that while the term 'energy' was only spelt like this in 1599, its etymological roots can be found in Artistotle's Metaphysics (c. 350 BC) where a state of functioning but also the ability 'to bring about something else' is foregrounded. Yet, ἐνέργεια in the Greek philosopher's ethical treatises also had the meaning of 'activity' (to denote more than simply a disposition or state) as well as, in his Rhetoric, the meaning of 'a vigorous style'. From the beginning then, the concept implied that physical as well as discursive powers are in charge of 'the ceaseless transformation of the potential into the actual' that I would like to emphasise in Energy Connections: life - whether human or nonhuman, organic or inorganic - as crea(c)tive becoming with energy of various states and forms (including narrativizations and even artistic anti-forms) being vital to its dynamics. 

The dynamic definition and interdisciplinary use of energy I want to draw on and promote here was set in motion by polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) in his 1695 paper 'Specimen dynamicum', where he introduced the term vis viva as a relational concept to complement a more mechanical, Cartesian notion of energy as a dead force with a living force or what is now called kinetic energy. Leibniz's idea was that a collision between two bodies transfers vis viva from one to the other, giving each a kind of 'life' by putting it in motion. Arguing that even when two colliding objects seem to come to an apparent halt, vis viva is always conserved in the form of small chaotic motions invisible to the eye – in the form of heat, in other words. Leibniz was thus the first to recognize the conservation of energy, which was formulated as the first law of thermodynamics (i.e., as the the conversion of mechanical energy into heat) in 19th-century physics and then became a ruling principle in other fields of science. His Monadology of 1714 can also be credited for endowing matter - even inanimate matter - with life, insofar as in this book he assumes an infinite number of substances he calls 'monads' making up any entity as an arrangement that is liable to continuous rearrangement and change through internal action. Since every composite is different, each can unfold in a singular manner depending on its inner energy or potentiality. Accordingly, evolution is seen as the actualisation of these individual potentialities, which foreshadows epigenetic propositions about the origin of life at the end of the 18th century that challeged the preformation theory of organisms articulated in natural history so far. While preformationists denied nature an energy of its own and saw all forms of life corresponding exactly to how God had designed them when He created the world, epigenesis postulated a generative and form-shaping power within nature and bodies (epigenesis/preformation). As with Leibniz, the focus of analytical interest is thus on the becoming of forms and a living and motive force immanent to a system.

The articulations above can be regarded as prescursors of an intra-active dynamism of matter-energy or 'microscopic forms of energy' (Dincer & Cengel, 2001: 120) that we find in post-classical physics, an umbrella term for atomic physics, quantum mechanics and theories of relativity, from the 1920s onwards. Diametrically opposed to dominant mechanistic and deterministic views of natural phenomena and the universe as perfect clockworks set in motion by and running on divine power, these 18th-century theories are paralleled in modern times by emerging notions of the unpredictability of living systems and the irreversibility and indeterminacy of their trajectories. In Energy Forms, the book that gave this subchapter its title, Bruce Clarke charts a cultural poetics of the energy concepts in classical thermodynamics and early electromagnetics that not only dominated science but also influenced the narratives of modernity at large. He mentions William Thomson’s paper 'On the Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy' of 1852 as the moment in Anglo-American science when the Galilean-Newtonian ‘marriage’ of mathematical and dynamic principles produced as its off-spring an authoritative discourse of energy as a calculable 'closed-system phenomenon seeking a final state of thermal equilibrium' (2001: 5). In the secular age, the harmony was no longer orchestrated by God but by gravitational laws. Within this framework, life as a whole, social processes and cultural developments could all be approached as problems in mechanical engineering and 'subjected … to the material economies of physical systems' (ibid.). During the same era, however, creative literature not only supported these 'positivist scientisms' (ibid.) but also presented a counterdiscourse to them. It did so precisely by putting centre-stage the tension within classical thermodynamics itself, namely that most energy forms – heat, light, electromagnetism – are not solid but fluid occurrences. Such flows cannot be captured and controlled for perfect and complete conversion into work within one system (conservation) but are irreversibly dissipated to the outside (entropy). The scientific romance 'The Persian King' (1886) by mathematician Charles Howard Hinton provides an example for the allegorical portrayal of the interaction between conservation and dispersal of energies (as analysed by Clarke, 1997). Slowly but surely, the discipline had to learn that dynamic systems oscillate between states of order and chaos, and that energy flux is a crucial aspect of life which renders complex systems open to each other (while being operationally closed) in order to enter into couplings indispensable for symbiosis and conducive, at the same time, to self-organisation and the autopoietic, biophysical and neurodynamical construction of individuality, or what Francisco Varela preferred to call 'interbeing' (reported in Rudrauf et. al., 2003).

In order to more fully grasp such recursive and embodied feedback loops for the emergence of life and the circular operations of internal self-production, it will be necessary to not only follow energy flows as theorised by vitalist thinkers, in biology, physics or philosophy, but also 'information dynamics' in computation (Dodig-Crnkovic, 2011 and forthcoming) and, as always, in the arts and literature (Clarke & Henderson, 2001). A more inclusive theorisation of what it is to be alive/a life will be in favour of the cosmopolitical project - a project that connects us human beings energetically to a (thermo)dynamic, complex and intelligent environment to which we owe our existence and survival as individuals and as a species. 

Energy Flows: Powering Cosmopolitics

In a natural universe governed by the laws of energy flow we must understand our true nature and how it is shared with other naturally occurring complex energy systems. - Dorion Sagan, 2009 (blog post)

Energy flows are the building blocks of the universe - at least when seen through the scientific theories that followed after classical thermodynamics. Energy moves in many channels and often nonlinear directions, and in all dynamic, far-from-equilibrium systems (Schneider & Sagan, see especially 'The River Must Flow: Open Systems' on the website of their book Into the Cool). Energy streams engulf us all (listen to 'We Are All Connected' in the Symphony of Science series, a sampling featuring Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye).

Again, these ideas are not new but find their discursive ancestors in much earlier times and places, above all in Asia, and also in non-scientific communities: dating back to the 5th century BC, qi is a very old expression in Chinese culture for this understanding. The sign, appropriately brushed as three wavy lines, is frequently translated as ‘energy flow’ or that which pertains to any living organism. Literally meaning ‘air’ or ‘breath’ it is similar to Hindu prana, which is the life 'ener-chi' one can access when practicing yoga. Such Eastern practices meet Western traditions in studies and therapies of life energy processes which draw on energy concepts from the natural sciences as well as the humanities. Finally, i-no-chi, the Japanese word for life, means 'energy of breath', as Nakeshi Naganuma explains (2009: 835). In his paper, written from the view of astrobiology, the scientist includes an extract from the Medieval essayist and poet Kamo-no-Chomei (1155-1216), which also testifies to the fluid and constantly changing existence of human and nonhuman life: 'The flowing river never stops and yet the water never stays the same. Foam floats upon the pools, scattering, reforming, never lingering long. So it is with man and all his dwelling places here on earth' (829). This notion is visualised on the same page with the drawing of Vitruvian Man as a vortex, consisting of molecules flowing in and out of the body. As these images suggest, change comes from the movements within a system, which is also expressed in Jane Bennett's definition of qi, or shi in her spelling, as 'the style, energy, propensity, trajectory, or élan inherent to a specific arrangement of things' (2010: 35). Here again, as already emphasised in the previous section of this book, we are made aware that open systems - including you! - owe their agency to the sum of the vital materialities that constitute them.

Unlike earlier vitalisms that ultimately see life sparked off by an outsider, the neo-vitalist materialisms I want to promote with my contribution do not posit any external nor extra-material force but vibrant tendencies for inter/intra-actions within human and nonhuman 'things' themselves. For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, such forces can also be virtual and not even primarily aiming at the (re)production of life. To disconnect life from the heterosexual matrix and the idea of well-organized bodies, Clare Colebrook (2010) draws precisely on their 'passive vitalism' (which in its turn is indebted to Leibniz) to forge a 'queer vitalism'. Within this framework, vitality is a decidely post-anthropocentric feature because it extends beyond the human. Queer vitalism cherishes a potential that is actualised not by individual intention but through encounters in the interest of the common good: every living being contributes in different and specific ways towards the flourishing of the whole (79). Focussing on the relation means, for Isabelle Stengers (2010), to attend to the 'meso' and the material (rather than micro or macro matters separately and exclusively) and, in the process, address the milieu/the middle of a composition, what and how something holds together or breaks. To put it differently, it is the configuration of the whole that counts, not so much any particular part of the assemblage, and that escapes the calculus, insofar as the agential sum is more than its active (or passive!) components. Translating this into energy terms, we can make two related claims: (1) energy flows do not belong to the individual alone nor to the collective but circulates between the micro and macro level, and (2) the total of energy input is never available to a system for its own functioning but there is always an unavailable rest that should not be seen as waste or loss but as output for the creative evolution of connected systems. This, in a nutshell, is the most important cosmological and 'mesopolitical' implication of a thermodynamics of life, more commonly known as nonequilibrium thermodynamics (Schneider & Kay, 1994).

 

Energy Matters: Entangling Physis and Semiosis

Matter and meaning are not separate elements. They are inextricably fused together, and no event, no matter how energetic, can tear them asunder ... most evidently perhaps ... when the smallest parts of matter are found to be capable of exploding deeply entrenched ideas and large cities. - Karen Barad, 2007

(On its way: From energy to information ... meaning systems ... see also Biosemiotics) 

Bibliography

Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Beer, G. (1996) Open Fields. Science in Cultural Encounter. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Clarke, B. (2001) Energy Forms. Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Clarke, B. & L. D. Henderson (eds)(2002) From Energy to Information: Representation in Science and Technology, Art, and Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Clarke, B. (2010) 'Information', in W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (eds)(2010) Critical Terms for Media Studies. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Kirby, V. (2011) Quantum Anthropologies. Life at Large. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Möllers, N. & K. Zachmann (ed.)(2012) Past and Present Energy Societies. How Energy Connects Politics, Technologies and Cultures. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Schneider, E.D. & J.J. Kay (1994) 'Life as a Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics', in Mathematical and Computer Modelling 19.6-8: 25-48.

Seaman, B. & O. Rössler (2008) 'Neosentience - A New Branch of Scientific and Poetic Inquiry Related to Artificial Intelligence', in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 6.1: 31-40.

Stengers, I. (ed.)(1987) D'une science à l'autre: des concepts nomades. Paris: Seuil.

Stengers, I. (2010, 2011) Cosmopolitics I + II. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.