Allergy as Strange Energy
Allergies are commonly encountered through their symptoms—sneezing, wheezing, itching, dripping, swelling—bodily responses that may be mild, debilitating or sometimes life threating. But what is an allergy? And what strange energies does this term set in circulation? An allergy is often described as the body’s overreaction to a substance – dust, pollen, spores, nuts, milk, seafood […]
What is Thermodynamic ‘Negative Entropy’?
In the Western philosophical and scientific tradition, theorists have endlessly tried to determine what separates life from non-life. Does life contain some special or enigmatic vital principle that other inanimate natural and artificial objects do not? Is it the fact that life can reproduce itself, evolve and set its own goals that distinguish it from, […]
Actual and Virtual Energy: From Aristotle to Rankine and Back Again
When energy is ‘potential’ where or when is it? If potential energy is not also already in some sense ‘actual,’ existing in the world somewhere as energy, for example, as a lump of coal that might be burnt, then does it only come into existence when it becomes actualized, as Aristotle might write? A quick […]
