Viscosity in Matter, Life and Sociality: The Case of Glacial Ice

A tension between solidity and fluidity tends to divide the sciences and the humanities along lines that define what is hard and soft in knowledge. This divide relates to similar dichotomies, between exteriority and interiority, material and spiritual, homogeneity and heterogeneity, matter and form, all of which have been partially mapped in Western thinking onto a traditional separation between earth and sky. Yet particular forms of knowledge sit uneasily within these tensions, a paradigmatic example of which is an understanding of solids as 'viscous fluids'. This article explores the concept of viscosity, attending to how it has impacted on understandings of matter, as well as broader social and cultural issues. It does so, particularly, by looking into the scientific study of ice, a material that has historically been regarded as solidfluid, to argue that life and sociality remain possible only in so far as matter that is viscid allows solid and fluid states to mingle.