The New Materialism and China:Energy Transformation,Qi,and Event

Clayton Crockett

(University of Central Arkansas,USA)



The New Materialism and China:Energy Transformation,Qi,and Event

Clayton Crockett

(University of Central Arkansas,USA)

This paper discusses the relationship between the new materialism and China.It holds that the event requires a new materialism of energy transformation.

the new materialism;energy transformation;Qi;event

Energy exploitation drives civilization.Chinese imperial civilization has been dedicated to the management of resources as well as people,particularly water and wood prior to the modern age.Chinese economic development was more gradual and less abrupt,but it required intensive environmental restoration after each cycle of production,as Mark Elwin explains in his environmental history of China,The Retreat of the Elephants.Elwin ends his impressive study by suggesting that Chinese environmental and technological practices were not aligned with Chinese ideas and ideologies.He concludes:“there seems no case for thinking that,some details apart,the Chinese anthropogenic environment was developed and maintained over the long run of more than three millennia because of particularly Chinese beliefs or perceptions.”〔1〕Slingerland concludes that it is “imperative that the sort of conceptual variation that emerges from comparative religion (and other cultural practices) be contextualized within a framework of basic human cognitive universals.”〔2〕

As human economic and social practices converge in an era of technological globalization,many scholars become concerned with affirming notions of radical cultural difference.I propose a different approach,based on a more universal energetic materialism.〔3〕Being is energy transformation,and energy is a fundamental cognitive category and fact about our world.Energy,however,is dynamic rather than static;it is never simply in a state of equilibrium or rest.This new energetic materialism is not a reductionist or atomic materialism based on reducing complex phenomena to simple building blocks of matter.And at the same time,it is not a consumerist materialism based on acquiring more and more money and stuff.I am using the word materialism for two reasons:(1) to affirm the idea of an immanent material/energy reality that resists the relocation of value to an otherworldly realm of transcendence;and(2) even though it is not technically a dialectical materialism in the classical Hegelian/Marxist sense,the term materialism retains a political charge,because it implies the energy to transform the world in radical as well as more conventional ways.

This energetic materialism I am proposing draws on three specific strands of thought:(1) contemporary scientific views about thermodynamics;(2) an understanding of Qi as matter/energy drawn from and partly read against the grain of classical Chinese Neo-Confucianism;and finally,(3) contemporary Continental philosophy,mainly that of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.These three strands compose a new “asymmetrical synthesis” of energy transformation.This new synthesis is required in order to fully understand and confront the three crises we face,which are distinct but interrelated:the financial crisis of money and debt,the energy crisis of fossil fuel scarcity,and the ecological crisis of humans exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet necessary for human and other beings’ flourishing.To confront these three crises we need to think and create an event.An event is not simply a revolutionary event in classic political terms,but an event of transformative thinking and living that allows us to exist and interrelate more sustainably together on earth.

To understand energy,we need a thorough understanding of thermodynamics.What is thermodynamics? Thermodynamics concerns the statistical workings of energy in dynamic systems.Energy is both finite,in terms of our ability to make use of natural resources,and infinite,in terms of its own conservation and perpetuation.The first law of thermodynamics states that energy is always conserved;it is infinite.The second law of thermodynamics is the problem,because the secondlaw is the law of entropy.Coined by RudolfClausius in 1865,entropy measures the disorder of a system.Entropy is a “turning in” or “turning toward,” a transformation that implies a bending towards disorder in any thermodynamic system.

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the two major scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century.The problem is that it appears to directly conflict with the other,which is evolution.As the ecologist Rod Swenson explains,this situation gives the impression of “two incommensurable rivers — the river of physics that flows downhill,and the river of biology,psychology and culture that flows uphill.”〔4〕Recent work by Swenson and others have suggested that there is only one river,and evolution is not an exception to but rather a further development of the laws of thermodynamics.

Building on the work of Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine on dissipating systems,as well as Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s systems theory,Swenson argues that what he callsautocatakinetic systems will select the path or paths “that minimize potential or maximize the entropy at the fastest rate given the constraints,” which is the law of maximum entropy production.〔5〕Given a temperature or pressure differential,the flow of energy that occurs will work to reduce this gradient differential as quickly and efficiently as possible.Swenson gives the example of a warm cabin in a cold forest.Heat escapes the cabin into the surrounding environment relatively slowly,but if one opens a window or a door,the rate of heat dissipation increases in order to maximize the entropy as quickly as possible.Ordered or organized flow through the window or door is more efficient at reducing potentials than disordered flow,and this is most clearly seen in a vortex,where organized air or water flow empties a container much more quickly than a slow,disorganized system.Swenson draws the conclusion:“the world can be expected to produce order whenever it gets the chance — the world is in the order-production business because ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow.”〔6〕If Swenson is correct,then the production of order is not an exception to the second law,but rather a consequence of it.The functioning of dissipative,autocatakinetic,or self-organized systems have been analyzed as exceptional structures,but what if these structures are the rule rather than the exception?

Biological evolution is still an incredible event,but it may be a leap in degree rather than in kind in relation to chemical and physical processes.There is a new science of thermodynamics that has emerged in the last half of the twentieth century,and it does not conform to the stereotypical image of classical thermodynamics from the nineteenth century.In their book,Into the Cool,Eric D.Schneider and Dorion Sagan examine and recapitulate the emergence of this revised science.Schneider and Sagan reformulate the second law as “nature abhors a gradient.”〔7〕Entropy production is gradient reduction.

The reduction of gradients at the maximum possible rate internally organizes complex processes,such as physical systems like Bénard cells and Taylor vortices,as well as chemical cycles.〔8〕For example,“Taylor vortices are produced in an apparatus that consists of two cylinders,one inside the other,with a fluid filling the gap between the cylinders.” When you turn the inner cylinder the resulting “rotation of the cylinders produces lateral pressure gradients across the fluid.”〔9〕The fluid dynamist Donald Coles showed that,“at a critical point of increased rotation,the fluid assumed one of eight different flow patterns.”〔10〕The point is that these patterns that characterize Taylor flows or Taylor vortices are steady-state organizations that are produced by the rotation that generates a pressure gradient differential,and the flows are the result of the system attempting to reduce the pressure differential as efficiently as possible.A simple rotational gradient produces complex patterns.Furthermore,these nonequilibrium systems display a kind of memory:“in their cyclicity they embody past modes of reaching equilibrium.”〔11〕The system carries short term memory of past states that helps it reduce a gradient most effectively,given that its direct path to equilibrium is blocked.The interaction of the system and its history — which is the combination the intensity that drives the system and the extensity that it exhibits,produces novel patterns.These patterns continue as long as there is a gradient differential that is being generated to fuel it.〔12〕

Complex patterns are the result of this gradient reduction,not the exception to it.The second law of thermodynamics “helps provide the temporal frame for the evolution of new laws.” According to Schneider and Sagan,“the second law leads to structure by selecting compounds in low-energy molecular combinations,and in selecting for cyclic networks that continuously degrade energy.”〔13〕Life can be seen as a more complexly ordered,genetically self-replicating process that is made possible by the prior organization of physical and chemical systems.Living systems also cycle complex compounds by means of metabolism,and this is a stable way to degrade energy.As Dorion Sagan explains in another essay,“nonequilibrium thermodynamics thus deconstructs the line between life and nonlife,much as Darwin deconstructs the barrier between humans and other organisms,by showing our behavioral,morphological,and biochemical continuity to other organisms.”〔14〕

Thermodynamics does not contradict evolution,but energetic gradient reduction explains how all complex processes work.〔15〕Thermodynamics was developed out of principles concerning the productivity of steam engines,but a broadened “nonequilibrium thermodynamics,as the mother of all sciences of complexity,has practical applications to economics,ecology,evolutionary theory,architecture,origins-of-life research,climate research,art,and NASA’s search for extraterrestrial life.”〔16〕In this new nonequilibrium thermodynamics,life and other complex systems are seen as grounded in energy flows,and exist according to the propensity of nature towards eliminating gradient differentials.〔17〕

In terms of cosmology,the theoretical physicist Lee Smolindraws on thermodynamics to argue that scientific laws evolve in time.Smolinargues that contemporary physics needs to appreciate the reality of time.In the physics of Newton,the relativity theory of Einstein,and even the equations of quantum mechanics,we can imagine a block universe where time is an illusion.The conventional understanding of the second law of thermodynamics as implying a movement from order to disorder only applies to isolated systems “enclosed in a box,” but “no living system is an isolated system.Smolin argues that “the steady flow of energy through a system can result in complex patterns and structure,evidence that systems are far from thermodynamic equilibrium.”〔18〕We all ride flows of matter and energy — flows ultimately driven by energy from the sun.”〔19〕According to Smolin,in our universe gravity works as a force to slow the dissolution of energy to form stars,and these stars then function as nonequilibrium systems that generate structure and,at least on earth,life.

The point of Smolin’s cosmology and Schneider and Sagan’s nonequilibrium thermodynamics is that all of existence is thermodynamic,but we need to understand thermodynamics in a twenty-first century way,rather than in terms of the nineteenth century formulations in which it arose.Energy works thermodynamically to reduce gradients in dynamic systems that do not exist at equilibrium,or in a box.Energy transformation is what is most real about reality,from the Big Bang to stars to planets to ecosystems to humans.Energy is material,but it is not atomic;it cannot simply be reduced to tiny building blocks that make up larger objects.Organization only works with energy flow.Energy flows generate and sustain organization.We need a new cognitive understanding of the world to appreciate this situation.

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze provides a theoretical framework to understand this new science.Deleuze is a poststructuralist philosopher,and his work is very important,but it is also difficult to read and understand.Furthermore,his masterwork,Difference and Repetition,was published in French in 1968 but not translated into English until 1994.In Difference and Repetition,Deleuze provides an ontology of energy transformation that is compatible with the ideas I am presenting here.〔20〕I will not go intogreat detail,but Deleuzesays that repetition is a repetition of difference rather than identity.He suggests that Western philosophy has struggled to think difference in itself because it always understands difference as subordinate to identity and the representation of identity.When we think about repetition,we presume that there must be some identity that gets repeated.But what if identity is secondary,and emerges out of difference?

Deleuze argues that identity is produced out of difference,and that repetition is a repetition of difference.The key problem is how to relate difference to difference if there is no fundamental prior identity.He says that there must be a differenciator to relate difference to difference.There is not just one difference,but a series of differences,and there is a force or intensity,which Deleuze calls a “dark precursor,” that relates two or more series of differences.Identity is produced out of the interaction of these series of differences.He writes:“given two heterogeneous series,two series of differences,the precursor plays the part of the differenciator of these differences.”〔21〕This force or precursor is a kind of intensity,and intensity is the energy that relates difference to difference,generating identities.Intensity is a kind of energy that produces differences in a continuous process of becoming.

According to Deleuze,intensity functions beyond the stereotypical view of thermodynamic entropy,because there is always a remainder of intensity that continues to generate new forms and individuations.He says that intensive quantity,this “energy in general will not then be confused with a uniform energy at rest,” or equilibrium.〔22〕An energy or intensive quantity generates differences out of the relations between different things,or series of things.There is an asymmetrical synthesis of difference that goes from high to low,or from a maximum of gradient difference to a reduction of the gradient.The main point for Deleuze that accords with the non-equilibrium of Schneider and Sagan is that in this gradient reduction something of the intensive force or energy is preserved,and gives rise to new differences as well as new processes of gradient reduction.The system is an open system that never reaches complete equilibrium,because there is always a force or energy that flows through it,generating new forms,structures and individuals.Differences appear to cancel themselves out in identity or equilibrium,but there continues to be an asymmetry to the process,an arrow of time that drives the change that continues to create new forms and situations.

How is this understanding of thermodynamic self-organization and Deleuze’s philosophy compatible with Chinese thought? I argue that in many respects it is similar because it emphasizes transformation and change over discrete objects.I also think that Deleuze’s philosophy generally is more compatible with Chinese thought than many other European philosophers,even though Deleuze does not explicitly engage with Chinese philosophy.Specifically,I suggest that this understanding of energy is similar to the notion of qi as it appears in Neo-Confucianism.Although the most influential interpretation of Neo-Confucian philosophy,including that of Zhu Xi,subordinates qi as material energy or vital force to principle,or li,the new materialism would see qi as primary.Li emerges out of qi as a form of self-organization or structure.

In Neo-Confucianism,qi is not simply matter that is divorced from spirit,but it is at once material and spiritual.Spirit is simply a refinement or purification of material qi,but it is not a different kind of thing.As the contemporary philosopher Du Weiming explains,“the continuous presence in Chinese philosophy of the idea of ch’i(qi) as a way of conceptualizing the basic structure and function of the cosmos…signifies a conscious refusal to abandon a mode of thought that synthesizes spirit and matter as an undifferentiated whole.”〔23〕What we call spirit and what we call matter are not dualistically opposed,but occur together in energy,which is a dynamic process or ongoing event of creation.We can distinguish between physical and thermodynamic energy,biological or metabolic energy,human psychical or emotional energy,and spiritual or religious energy,but these are all repetitions of difference based on transformations of intensive energy.

This philosophical perspective might be more Neo-Daoist than Neo-Confucian,but this is mainly the case only if one takes Zhu Xi as the representative Neo-Confucian thinker,and ignores the Daoistand Buddhist elements that are integrated into Neo-Confucianism beginning in the eleventh century CE.For Zhu Xi,li as principle precedes and takes priority over qi as material energy in expressing the taiji or Great Ultimate.Due to Zhu Xi’s incredible influence this view has become more stereotypical for how Neo-Confucianism is later understood.Neo-Confucian philosophers like Zhang Zai and Wang Fuzhi complicate this picture,however,because they understand qi and li as much more closely interconnected.

According to Zhang Zai,everything in the universe is composed of qi.Zhang claims that the Great Harmony has to be correlated with the Great Vacuity or void,where the Great Vacuity (think of the Big Bang) is the source of all energy or material force.In his work Correcting Youthful Ignorance,Zhang says that the Great Vacuity “is the original substance of material force (qi).Its integration and disintegration are but objectifications caused by Change.”〔24〕The way that qi manifests itself is li,which is the intrinsic order to the transformations or changes of qi.“Although material force in the universe integrates and disintegrates,and attracts and repulses in a hundred ways,” Zhang says that “nevertheless the principle (li) according to which it operates has an order and is unerring.” The order or harmony that is constituted by qi’s production of li is called Great Harmony.According to Zhang,“unless the whole universe is in the process of fusion and intermingling like fleeting forces moving in all directions,it may not be called Great Harmony.” When those who talk about the Way (Dao) know this,then they really know the Way,and when those who study Change understand this,then they really understand Change.”〔25〕Change for Zhang refers not only to the principle of change or transformation,but also explicitly to the Yi jing,or the Book of Changes,which is incredibly influential for most of Chinese Neo-Confucianism,although far less important to Zhu Xi,who downgraded it,considering it a “book for primarily for divination.”〔26〕

Ultimately the Vacuity or void is seen by Zhang “as nothing but material force,” or qi,which means that all existence is “all one and not a duality.”〔27〕This duality is not undifferentiated,however,because it is the differentiation or repetition of qi that generates forms and beings,including humans.Zhang states that whoever “apprehends integration and disintegration,spirit and eternal transformation,appearance and disappearance,form and absence of form,and trace them to their source,penetrates the secret of Change.”〔28〕So qi as material force or energy is the secret of Change,and generates its own li by means of dynamic processes of gradient reduction and entropy production,which both produces and dissolves forms and beings.

Later,in the seventeenth century,Wang Fuzhi picks up on and elaborates this materialism of Zhang Zai,when he says that “principle depends on material force.”〔29〕According to Wang,li is “not a principle that can be grasped.It is invisible….Therefore the first time there is any principle is when it is seen in material force.After principles have been found,they of course appear to become tendencies.We see principle only in the necessary aspect of tendencies.”〔30〕Principles can only be grasped as tendencies after the appearance of qi.They are invisible or practically non-existent prior to the working of material energy.Physical laws or principles are tendencies because they express how things work and interact.And these laws are not timeless;they evolve,as Smolinaffirms:

As new states (of material energy,qi) arise in nature,new laws (li) evolve to guide them — which suggests that the fundamental interactions we observe and describe with the Standard Model of Particle Physics resulted from the “locking in” of new laws when the states corresponding to electrons,quarks,and their relatives emerged as the universe cooled shortly after the Big Bang.〔31〕

Wang opposes the abstract quality of Zhang’s Great Vacuity,insisting on the concreteness of particular things.He says that “few people are capable of saying that without a concrete thing there cannot be the Way,but it is certainly true.”〔32〕Wang’s philosophy coincides with a more empirical turn in Chinese philosophy,and this empiricism is a correction to abstract metaphysical speculation.At the same time,the more concrete and specific we get in terms of contemporary particle physics,the more strange and abstract these particles seem to behave.In fact,they are not merely particles;they are also waves at the same time.This is called wave-particle duality or complementarity.Insofar as Wang is understood as a modern materialist he is limited in his atomic materialism,but a new energetic materialism allows us to read Zhang and Wang in more interesting ways.

Zhang talks about the Great Harmony,and we need a new perception of harmony that is material and dynamic,as well as spiritual and aesthetic.The new harmony would refuse any simple opposition between East and West.This new materialism of energy transformation is spiritual,personal,natural and cosmic,at distinct levels of transformation that are neither reducible to nor exchangeable with each other.Focusing on energy also allows us to better understand our material situation in practical terms,which is one of depletion of finite energy reserves and other natural resources as human population and industrial civilization strains the limits of the planet.

Our financial crisis stems from the rise of finance capital and exotic instruments like derivatives for the investment of money,where speculation of and on currency trumps practical need.This speculation creates bubbles that burst,like in the global recession of 2008,whose effects we are still witnessing.Money and finance are related in complex ways to energy as a resource.The exploitation of cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels produces our material civilization and underlies our global economy.Energy supplies are becoming scarcer and more expensive,even as demand is growing to meet rising populations and the need for food,fresh water,arable land,automobiles,computers,smart phones and other consumer goods.Finally,as we reach the limits of global resources,including the ability of the atmosphere to regulate itself within the narrow range that is hospitable for human flourishing,we face a growing ecological-environmental crisis.

In this difficult political and ecological situation,we need to devote our thinking and actions toward the conception of a new event.This event is tied to a new understanding of energy,and an acknowledgement that our physical,social and spiritual existence is related to our ability to feed off of energy gradients.But our current mode of living based on perpetual growth is not sustainable and is technically impossible.According to Deleuze,an event is not simply what happens,but what is going on inside what happens,its inner transformation.In his book The Logic of Sense,Deleuze says that “the splendor and the magnificence of the event is sense.The event is not what occurs (an accident),it is rather inside what occurs,the purely expressed.It signals and awaits us.”〔33〕Here an event is the inner sense of a proposition.

Deleuze also associates the event with a singularity;“singularities are veritable events,they communicate in one and the same Event which endlessly redistributes them,while their transformations form a history.〔34〕In physics a singularity indicates a transition or a bifurcation point,a threshold where a small change has a great impact.We need to think about money,energy,and earth in new ways,and we need to think about the event,which expresses the most profound sense of what is going on around us.How do these crises communicate with each other,and what do they express about us and our world? How can we make do with less material goods but not give up what makes human civilization worthwhile? Can we find new sources of alternative energy to replace the fossil fuels that are becoming harder to extract even as they are warming our atmosphere? The event we need to consider is not simply local,cultural or traditional;it is a new universalhistory of earth.This history is also an ecologybecause it is tied to recognition that we live on a shared planet with limited resources but it also resonates with infinite forms of energy from the entire cosmos,including the sun.Thinking the event requires a new materialism of energy transformation,which I have tried to sketch out here.

〔1〕Mark Elwin,The Retreat of the Elephants:An Environmental History of China,New Haven:Yale University Press,2004,p.471.

〔2〕Edward Slingerland,Body and Mind in Early China:An Integrated Humanities-Science Approach,Journal of the American Academy of Religion,Vol.81,No.1,2013,p.43.

〔3〕For a fuller account of this new materialism based on energy transformation,see Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W.Robbins,Religion,Politics and the Earth:The New Materialism,New York:Palgrave Macmillan,2012.

〔4〕〔5〕〔6〕Rod Swenson,Autocatakinetics,Evolution,and the Law of Maximum Energy Production:A Principled Foundation Towards the Study of Human Ecology,Advances in Human Ecology,Vol.6,1997,available online at http://www.spontaneous order.net/humaneco2.html.

〔7〕〔8〕〔9〕〔10〕〔11〕〔12〕〔13〕Eric D.Schneider and Dorion Sagan,Into the Cool:Energy Flow,Thermodynamics and Life,Chicago:University of Chicago Press,2005,pp.6,77,126,128,129,130,31.

〔14〕Dorion Sagan,“Introduction” to Jakob von Uexküll,A Foray into the World of Humans and Animals with a Theory of Meaning,trans.Joseph D.O’Neil,Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,2010,p.18.

〔15〕〔16〕See Schneider and Sagan,Into the Cool,pp.31,138.

〔17〕 It is significant that Stephen Hawking’s major scientific contribution was the discovery of the application of thermodynamic laws to black holes.Black holes can be treated as entropy producers,they dissipate heat as information,and they eventually can disappear given massive time spans far beyond the scope of the universe.See also the contribution of Ted Jacobson whose paper shows that Einstein’s field equations are convertible into thermodynamic equations,“Thermodynamics of Spacetime:The Einstein Equations of State,” Physical Review Letters 75,pp.1260-1263 (1995).Available online at http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v75/i7/p1260_1.

〔18〕〔19〕Lee Smolin,Time Reborn:From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe,New York:Houghton Mifflin,2013,pp.218,219.

〔20〕See Clayton Crockett,DeleuzeBeyondBadiou:Ontology,Multiplicity and Event,New York:Columbia University Press,2013,for a fuller interpretation of Deleuze.See chapter eight,“The Energetics of Being,” for a discussion of Deleuze in terms of energy and thermodynamics.

〔21〕〔22〕Gilles Deleuze,Difference and Repetition,trans.Paul Patton,New York:Columbia University Press,1994,pp.119,240.

〔23〕Tu Weiming,Confucian Thought:Selfhood as Creative Transformation,Albany:State University of New York Press,1985,p.37.

〔24〕〔25〕〔26〕〔27〕〔28〕Chang Tsai,Correcting Youthful Ignorance,in A Chinese Book of Source Philosophy,translated and compiled by Wing-Tsit Chan,Princeton:Princeton University Press,1963,pp.501,501,589,502,502.

〔29〕〔30〕Wang Fuchih,selections from the Ch’uan-shani-shu,in Chan,A Source Book of Chinese Philosophy,pp.697,698.

〔31〕Smolin,Time Reborn,p.152.

〔32〕Wang,in A Source Book of Chinese Philosophy,p.694.

〔33〕〔34〕Gilles Deleuze,The Logic of Sense,trans.Mark Lester with Charles Stivale,New York:Columbia University Press,1990,pp.149,53.

About the author：Zhu Tiejun(1979—),master,associate professor of Anhui Polytechnic University.

〔*〕2016 Anhui Province university outstanding young talent support key project (GXYQZD2016117);2016 Anhui Province university provincial scientific research key project “Research on graphic arts language of Fanchang Zheqi dark jade stone carving” (SK2016A012).