Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent is Professor Emeritus at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Sacha Loeve is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science and Technology at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3.

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations

Prologue: Why write a biography of carbon?

PART I
The Invention of Carbon

1. Mephitis
A thing with many names
A genius of place
Geomythologies
An elixir of youth

2. An indescribable air
From mephitic air to 'sylvester spirit'
From 'sylvester spirit' to fixed air
From fixed air to carbonic acid

3. Between diamond and coal
The diamond enigma
A creature of nomenclature
Coal's footprint
Word battles

4. An exemplary element
A textbook example
A material abstraction
A metaphysical substance

5. Carbon liberates itself
One among others
Two or three chemistries?
A quartet of elements
An exchange centre
A standard of measurement

6. A relational being
Atomicity
The C-C bond
Asymmetry
Dispositions and affordances
A philosopher's stone

7. Welcome to the nanoworld
Filaments doomed to oblivion
Seeing without discovering
A soccer ball
The nanotube jungle

8. Strategic materials
Nuclear graphite
Graphene as an academic material
A pure surface rich in promises
At the limits of materiality
Unique and generic


PART II
Carbon civilisation

9. Traces, stories and memories
Carbon as writer
Carbon as graphic designer
Diamond engraver and reader
Radiocarbon dating
Carbon archive

10. The resilient rise of fossils
Memories of life on Earth
A carbon liberation movement?
Multiple coals
Prometheus unchained
Scarcity foretold
A hoped-for turnaround

11. The bewitching power of oil
The black gold rush
A capitalist sorcerer
A gift from the Earth
Virtues as traps

12. The age of plastics
Better things for better living... through chemistry
Plastic miracles
Reinforced with carbon
A continent of waste

13. Working towards a more sustainable economy
From black gold to green oil
Towards white carbon?
Universal machine

14. The carbon market
Carbon finance
The new universal standard
A common measure
Why carbon?
Carbon pricing


PART III
Carbon temporalities

15. Carbon cosmogony
In the mists of time
Improbable carbon
Anthropogenic carbon?
Carbon as Earthling!
Multiple cycles

16. Turbulence in the biosphere.
Carbon Redux
Selfish carbon?
A melting pot
Star of the oceans: Emiliana Huxleyi
The potential of soils

17. Rethinking time with carbon
Anthropocene
A grand narrative
The accelerating arrow of time
Disentangling scales
Multiple temporalities.

EPILOGUE. The heteronyms of carbon
Stories of genius
A plurality of modes of existence
Ontography
Who is carbon?


Notes
Index