Las tasas de producción y consumo de alimentos en el mundo se hacen insostenibles. Estados Unidos está a la cabeza de los países que exceden con creces su capacidad en esta materia. La causa principal es la incorporación de combustibles fósiles en la producción de alimentos desde 1950, tanto en forma de energía cinética, como también en los pesticidas y otros productos utilizados en su producción. Según el autor, literalmente nos estamos comiendo los hidrocarburos rápidamente y sin tener (...) ninguna alternativa con la cual reemplazarlos. Sólo un restablecimiento de un equilibrio entre capacidad productiva sostenible y consumo alimentario podría evitar la crisis que se avista en el horizonte. (shrink)

La 26ª Cumbre del Cambio Climático se realizó en el Escocia a finales del 2021. La COP 26 concluyó con el “Pacto climático de Glasgow” donde, por primera vez en la historia de estas cumbres, se menciona explícitamente la responsabilidad de los combustibles fósiles en la crisis climática. En este escrito se reflexiona sobre lo que pasó en la Cumbre, las reacciones que se produjeron y se hace una apreciación bioética prospectiva de los acuerdos. Se concluye que la (...) ciencia climática, de por sí incierta y cambiante, sigue yendo detrás de los intereses económicos y políticos, pues los acuerdos en estas materias están permeados por ideologías que, desde diversos frentes, se pretenden difundir por todo el planeta. (shrink)

La concepción del espacio territorial y su ordenamiento definen en buena medida el funcionamiento de una sociedad, sobre todo, en términos de flujos de materiales y energía. En momentos en que el acceso a combustibles fósiles baratos se deteriora y ante la agudización del calentamiento global, se considera útil la reflexión de cómo se han construido territorialmente las sociedades modernas; en particular la de Estados Unidos (EUA), ciertamente la más despilfarradora del planeta. El presente texto parte, por tanto, (...) de revisar la situación energética-ambiental contemporánea, para luego revisar históricamente el caso de Suburbia, un esquema contemporáneo de construcción espacial-territorial de Estados Unidos que ha tenido como punta de lanza la creciente asfaltización y automovilización del país. Sus consecuencias sociales y ecológicas, entre otras, son analizadas. Se concluye con una valorización de alternativas y retos. (shrink)

Fire is a force that links everyday human activities to some of the most powerful energetic movements of the Earth. Drawing together the energy-centred social theory of Georges Bataille, the fire-centred environmental history of Stephen Pyne, and the work of a number of ‘pyrotechnology’ scholars, the paper proposes that the generalized study of combustion is a key to contextualizing human energetic practices within a broader ‘economy’ of terrestrial and cosmic energy flows. We examine the relatively recent turn towards fossil-fuelled ‘internal (...) combustion’ in the light of a much longer human history of ‘broadcast’ burning of vegetation and of artisanal pyrotechnologies – the use of heat to transform diverse materials. A combustion-centred analysis, it is argued, brings human collective life into closer contact with the geochemical and geologic conditions of earthly existence, while also pointing to the significance of explorative, experimental and even playful dispositions towards energy and matter. (shrink)

Los problemas ambientales actuales tienen su origen en los cambios de fuentes de energía y de metabolismo productivo a lo largo de la historia. En respuesta a dichos problemas, Europa ha definido una estrategia de transición energética, reforzada con estrategias de economía circular y de captura de carbono, con el fin de convertirse en el primer continente climáticamente neutro. Las ciudades desempeñan un papel muy relevante en la transición energética porque acogen una buena parte de las actividades humanas y son (...) responsables de una buena parte de los consumos. En este artículo proponemos una clasificación de las distintas sociedades a lo largo de la historia desde el punto de vista medioambiental y energético, que distingue cuatro sociedades: la orgánica, la mineral, la fósil y la hipocarbónica. Las analizamos considerando aspectos urbanos, tecnológicos y relativos a las fuentes de energía y consumos. Las transiciones energéticas a lo largo de la historia se han prolongado mucho en el tiempo. La ciudad smart se vislumbra como una de las innovaciones que permitirán implementar la transición energética en Europa de forma rápida y progresiva. La escala global de la descarbonización se ve, sin embargo, como uno de los mayores retos a superar. (shrink)

Filtration combustion is described by Laplacian growth without surface tension. These equations have elegant analytical solutions that replace the complex integro-differential motion equations by simple differential equations of pole motion in a complex plane. The main problem with such a solution is the existence of finite time singularities. To prevent such singularities, nonzero surface tension is usually used. However, nonzero surface tension does not exist in filtration combustion, and this destroys the analytical solutions. However, a more elegant approach exists for (...) solving the problem. First, we can introduce a small amount of pole noise to the system. Second, for regularisation of the problem, we throw out all new poles that can produce a finite time singularity. It can be strictly proved that the asymptotic solution for such a system is a single finger. Moreover, the qualitative consideration demonstrates that a finger with 1 2 of the channel width is statistically stable. Therefore, all properties of such a solution are exactly the same as those of the solution with nonzero surface tension under numerical noise. The solution of the ST problem without surface tension is similar to the solution for the equation of cellular flames in the case of the combustion of gas mixtures. (shrink)

We set out by noting the preference for circular flows in ecological thought, and the related abhorrence of inefficiency and waste that Western ecology shares with mainstream economic thinking. This has often been manifest in a shared disdain both for uncontained, free-burning fire and for ‘unmanaged’ sexual desire. The paper constructs a ‘pyrosexual’ counter-narrative that explores the mutually constitutive and generative implication of sex and fire. Bringing together the solar ecology of Georges Bataille, feminist and queer thinking about sexuality and (...) reproduction, and a range of ways of theorising biological life and fire, we explore how fire mediates between organismic desire and the energetic dynamics of the earth and solar system. The first section takes a genealogical approach to fire and sex that traces their entanglement from the initial ‘assembling’ of fire through to the emergence of a fire-handling creature. The second section looks at how fire has been contained and intensified by human actors, and the role that heat-driven transformations of inorganic matter have played in the incitement and channeling of desire in urban spaces. The third section addresses the development of industrial ‘heat engines’ and the implications for desire and reproduction of tapping vast reservoirs of subterranean solar energy. We round off by beginning to consider what alternative possibilities might lie in the renegotiation of sex and fire on a planet undergoing rapid change. (shrink)

This piece looks into the atmospheric and catastrophic environments that punctuate H of H: storms, ice-breaks, volcanic eruptions, and nuclear explosions that give the tragic narrative an electrifying edge. It draws attention to a “chemical” poetics at the heart of Carson’s translation technique and thinking about Euripides’ play. This mannerism, also found in Euripides’s “combustible mixture of realism and extremism” (Grief Lessons, blurb), is not exclusive to H of H. It can be detected across Carson’s oeuvre – a tendency to (...) combust the reader’s mind in ways that become a philosophy for re-reading Euripides and, more ambitiously, Carson’s own sense of the tragic. (shrink)

At the end of the 19th-century three technologies had emerged as sources of motive power for the automobile: steam, internal combustion, and electric motors. In 1900, in the United States and around the world, each of these powered a roughly equal number of automobiles. Thus, the early period of automobile development offers fertile ground for the study of technological path choice. At that time, it appeared that the electric motor was poised to become the dominant automotive technology. However, the internal (...) combustion engine achieved this status instead. Although a large number of studies have examined the history of the automobile with a view to determining the reasons for the emergence of the internal combustion engine as the dominant technology for the car engine, no consensus has emerged of what the critical factors were. A close reexamining of the history allows us to identify the years 1900-1904 as the period during which the automobile’s technological path was determined. A review of the conditions prevailing during this period and the stages of development of the sociotechnical systems in which each of the alternative automotive technologies was embedded helps us identify the aspiration for touring as the key factor fixing the path for the technological development of the automobile from that point on. (shrink)

The article discusses the origins, formation, and development of the scientific school of chemical physics and nanotechnology in Kazakhstan. The authors describe the achievements of a scientific school that is on par with the best of its kind locally and globally, adding new competitive results of practical relevance to the economic development of the country. The article also highlights the special role of the outstanding scientist Zulkhair Aimukhametovich Mansurov in the development of the methodological foundations of the scientific school, the (...) targeted training of the scientific personnel in the priority areas of the development of Kazakhstani chemical physics, and the creation of nanoscale materials for multifunctional purposes. Also, the main principles of the philosophy of Mansurov’s scientific school are presented. (shrink)

In the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender ( ATLA ), the special materials called Elements seem to be major and basic components of the universe. In our world, by contrast, air is a mixture of oxygen and other gases, fire is the visible portion of chemical combustion, water is dihydrogen monoxide, and earth is a mixture of various sorts of molecules. Metaphysics deals with the ways things exist or could exist, how they come to be or change, and how (...) these things are related to each other logically and physically. Ancient philosophy might provide some inspiration. This chapter extracts some insights from the ancient Greeks, and then looks into Mesoamerican philosophy. It examines South and East Asian philosophy for clues. If spirits and the Elements are separate kinds of substances, then it is possible that the ATLA universe is dualistic: that there are two types of fundamental things in that universe. (shrink)

According to a standard characterization of dispositions, when a disposition is activated by a stimulus, a manifestation of that disposition typically occurs. For example, when flammable gasoline encounters a spark in an oxygen-rich environment, the manifestation of flammability—combustion—occurs. In the dispositions/powers literature, it is common to assume that a manifestation is an effect of a disposition being activated. (I use “disposition” and “power” interchangeably). I address two questions in this chapter: Could all manifestations be effects that involve things acquiring only (...) dispositional properties? And, is thinking of manifestations as contributions to effects preferable to thinking of them as effects? I defend negative responses to both questions. If all properties are dispositional, as the pandispositionalists claim, then any time the activation of a disposition results is something acquiring a new property, it results in something acquiring another disposition. Some worry that a vicious regress ensues (Swinburne, 1980; Bird, 2007a, 2007b: 132-46). While I believe that regress arguments can be addressed, my worry is that, on the pandispositionalist view, manifestations become unobservable. Thinking of manifestations as effects is problematic in cases where what actually occurs is not the kind of effect that the power is a power for, but rather a complex interaction of various powers. Because of this, some prefer to think of manifestations as contributions to effects (Molnar, 2003: 194-8; Mumford, 2009). I argue against this proposal on the ground that it introduces mysterious new entities into our ontology. In the end, the most plausible view is that a single kind of power can have different kinds of effects, some of which involve the instantiation of non-dispositional properties. I proceed as follows. In the first section of this chapter, I show that the philosophical concept of a manifestation is the concept of an effect. In the second section, I argue against the claim that all manifestations involve instantiations of only dispositional properties. In the third section, I argue against the view that manifestations are contributions rather than effects. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on the following correspondence theorem (which has been defended and formally proved elsewhere): if theory T has been empirically successful in a domain of applications A, but was superseded later on by a different theory T* which was likewise successful in A, then under natural conditions T contains theoretical expressions which were responsible for T’s success and correspond (in A) to certain theoretical expressions of T*. I illustrate this theorem at hand of the phlogiston versus oxygen theories (...) of combustion, and the classical versus relativistic theories of mass. The ontological consequences of the theorem are worked out in terms of the indirect reference and partial truth. The final section explains how the correspondence theorem may justify a weak version of scientific realism without presupposing the no-miracles argument. (shrink)

El propósito de este texto es sugerir algunas ideas sobre el tiempo y la impronta. Comenzando con una breve consideración de la expresión francesa maintenant, el texto pasa a examinar la diferencia, propuesta por G. Dumezil, entre impronta y fósil. En un primer momento, la inspiración viene de algunos aspectos de la religión; luego, de las dos dimensiones del tiempo de la historia que propone Peguy: una que solo considera la pura secuencia de los acontecimientos y la otra que retiene (...) lo posible, la impronta del pasado; finalmente, del poema de Baudelaire "Le Cygne", en el cual es posible distinguir una historia que lo arrasa todo y una conservación del pasado como forma de resistencia o protesta del individuo. A partir de aquí el texto presenta la impronta como la dimensión del tiempo en la que la subjetivación le añade profundidad, permanencia de lo que ya pasó, al tiempo de la historia. En un segundo momento, inspirado en la unidimensionalidad de Marcuse y en la sociedad de consumo de Pasolini, el texto trata las ideas de realidad y de progreso para sugerir que la realidad no es solo la actualidad y el progreso no es la moda: la impronta añade conservación. Para el tercer momento, la inspiración viene de Andy Warhol. Ahora la idea es presentar la impronta en su función de puente, de vínculo entre el arte contemporáneo y el antiguo. Finalmente, el texto alude a la noción de difracción, tomada de Fourier, para subrayar la idea de que la impronta implica contestación del puro presente, resistencia, liberación. The purpose of this text is to suggest some ideas about the issue of time and trace. Beginning with a short consideration about the French expression "maintenant", the text goes on examining the difference, pointed out by G. Dumézil, between trace and fossil. In a first moment, the inspiration comes from some aspects of religion. Then, from Peguy's two dimensions of the time of history: one concerned with the pure sequence of events and the other retaining the possible, the trace of the past. Finally from Baudelaire's poem "Le Cygne", where it is possible to distinguish between a history that sweeps everything and a conservation of the past as some sort of resistance or protest of the individual. With this in mind, the text presents trace as this dimension of time where subjectivation adds depth, permanence of what is already gone, to the time of history. In a second moment, inspired by Marcuse's unidimensionality and Pasolini's consumer society, the text examines de idea of reality and progress to say that reality is not just current events and progress is not fashion: trace adds conservation. For the third moment, the inspiration comes from Andy Warhol. Now the idea is to present the trace in its function ofbridge or link between the contemporary and the ancient art. Finally, the text considers the notion of diffraction, taken from Fourier, which helps to underline the idea that trace means challenge to the pure present, resistance, liberation. (shrink)

The electric activities of cortical pyramidal neurons are supported by structurally stable, morphologically complex axo-dendritic trees. Anatomical differences between axons and dendrites in regard to their length or caliber reflect the underlying functional specializations, for input or output of neural information, respectively. For a proper assessment of the computational capacity of pyramidal neurons, we have analyzed an extensive dataset of three-dimensional digital reconstructions from the NeuroMorphoOrg database, and quantified basic dendritic or axonal morphometric measures in different regions and layers of (...) the mouse, rat or human cerebral cortex. Physical estimates of the total number and type of ions involved in neuronal electric spiking based on the obtained morphometric data, combined with energetics of neurotransmitter release and signaling fueled by glucose consumed by the active brain, support highly efficient cerebral computation performed at the thermodynamically allowed Landauer limit for implementation of irreversible logical operations. Individual proton tunneling events in voltage-sensing S4 protein alpha-helices of Na+, K+ or Ca2+ ion channels are ideally suited to serve as single Landauer elementary logical operations that are then amplified by selective ionic currents traversing the open channel pores. This miniaturization of computational gating allows the execution of over 1.2 zetta logical operations per second in the human cerebral cortex without combusting the brain by the released heat. (shrink)

I Am Dynamite ignites an alternative theory of the self and will, wrapped up in a combustible assault upon scholarly convention. Asking why the real effort of constructing and living within an identity is so often overlooked, it examines the subjective experience of existing in the world, with the power to define and transform oneself. Considering the trials and triumphs of five very different modern subjects--Primo Levi, Ben Glaser, Stanley Spencer, Rachel Silberstein and Friedrich Nietzsche--Nigel Rapport asks: can consciousness of (...) being a self in the world enable control over one's life within it? Calling for a renewed appreciation of the extraordinary within us all, this richly inventive work seeks to restore knowledge to its essential practical and moral aims--aiding and informing the lives we actually live. (shrink)