Abstract
This issue opens an inquiry into the tension between solidity and fluidity. This tension is ingrained in the Western intellectual tradition and informs theoretical debates across the sciences and humanities. In physics, solid is one phase of matter, alongside liquid, gas and plasma. This, however, assumes all matter to be particulate. Reversing the relation between statics and dynamics, we argue to the contrary, that matter exists as continuous flux. It is both solid and fluid. What difference would it make were we to start from our inescapable participation in a world of solid fluids? Is solid fluidity a condition of being in the midst of things, or of intermediacy on a solid-fluid continuum? Does the world appear fluid in the process of its formation, but solid when you look back on things already formed? Here we open new paths for theorizing matter and meaning at a time of ecological crisis.
Highlights
This issue opens an inquiry into the tension between solidity and fluidity
These multiple aspects of solidity – hardness, undividedness, duration, purity and volume – while they might not share any unitary essence, form a kind of semantic cluster which points to a certain convergence in experience
It is a word that links the two senses of hardening and continuity in time. It is only by introducing the work of time, we suggest, that the conundrum of solid fluidity, or fluid solidity, can be resolved
Summary
In the physical sciences, ‘solid’ has acquired a very specific meaning as one of the possible phases of matter. Depend on how these particles are compounded With solids, they are so tightly bound that their freedom to move is severely constrained. The Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) goes to the other extreme, where matter is cooled close to the point of absolute zero, such that its particles have virtually no kinetic energy at all. Avalanches and surging glaciers are among many natural examples in which apparently solid matter gives way to flow, often with devastating consequences In other cases, it is a question of time. Glass is another example of a material that defies any opposition between solid and fluid (Engelmann, this issue). The case of solid-in-solid, is of wider geomorphological significance, since it bears directly on our understanding of processes both of fossilization and of the formation of sedimentary rock
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