tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post4157633094766185272..comments2024-03-28T21:43:44.433-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: The metaphysics and aesthetics of plasticEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90725299273576744722014-02-21T13:44:17.830-08:002014-02-21T13:44:17.830-08:00"How would we regard plastic discards if we d..."How would we regard plastic discards if we did not know that about them? It's impossible to say; we've been irreparably tainted with that knowledge."<br /><br />Here's a thought: benches made out of recycled plastic. If I saw a pile of discarded bus stop benches, I think I might find that an intriguing sight, even if I didn't think it was beautiful. I'd know they were plastic - metal would look different, wood would have aged differently - but there wouldn't be the "yuck! trash!" feeling like take-out boxes or plastic bottles (or tin cans or glass jars) would evoke.<br /><br />On a building, aging plastic looks... dissonant, I guess? "That was supposed to look futuristic and modern and now it looks old and gross." I feel like I have a sense of what the original designer wanted, and the old plastic isn't living up to that. But if I see old, un-maintained metal, wood, or stone, I don't expect that it was supposed to never look different - of course metal, wood, and stone degrade. cheyannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-33342920396035887312014-02-21T07:21:24.597-08:002014-02-21T07:21:24.597-08:00Mr. Green,
Well, parachutes used to be made out o...Mr. Green,<br /><br /><i>Well, parachutes used to be made out of silk.</i><br /><br />This is true, and I was vaguely aware of it when I putting forward the parachute example. But if I had said, "Imagine jumping out of a plane with a parachute made of silk," then I wouldn't have been able to say, "Yikes."<br /><br />Kiddin' aside, since making parachutes out of nylon is more economical than making them out of silk, the parachute example is dismissible as a poor example (for it ignores one of the two constraints Crude had mentioned).Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-38035475160732330202014-02-18T11:23:52.120-08:002014-02-18T11:23:52.120-08:00That's great PatrickH.
Less poetically, I th...That's great PatrickH. <br /><br />Less poetically, I think it probably has something to do with the way light refracts off the material; plastic doesn't seem to "absorb" light the way other more beautiful "substantial" substances do. It's telling that bad computer graphics in movies are usually described as looking like "plastic." In that field the designers are keenly aware that the issue is the subtleties of the way light bounces of real objects and materials. It's no coincidence Toy Story was the first and most successful computer animated franchise ever. But, why does the way light bounces off plastic cause it to seem ugly? <br /><br />My guess it that it is the uniformity of the material; plastic doesn't allow for any subtle surface texture variation, creating an effect that looks inert and flat. Just as your ear actually prefers an environment of slight white noise to silence for focus, your eye enjoys a slight sense of "noise" in the surface of objects and materials. (In architecture, this is the purpose of ornamentation. It's why modern architecture, with it's slab-like aesthetic, was such a disaster.) <br /><br />Plastic is the fluorescent lighting of materials. It's poetic justice of a sort that plastic has come to symbolize mass production and late capitalism in many ways: inert, cheap, lacking in subtlety, and seemingly indestructible. It all works together of course, the part reflects the whole.Matt Siglhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18192264713975819929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76528194876480145782014-02-18T09:07:59.075-08:002014-02-18T09:07:59.075-08:00Cool metaphysics topic! Plastic is used for dispos...Cool metaphysics topic! Plastic is used for disposable items hence making it "cheap and throwaway" and to some relates to garbage which associates the mind with germs and "dirtyness" if you will. While metals and the like are used for things we wouldn't dispose of after a couple of uses and hence cleaner and more valuable.<br />brandi abou-rakabannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46553407300172598682014-02-18T04:14:05.449-08:002014-02-18T04:14:05.449-08:00I think Crude is on a good track. As with anything...I think Crude is on a good track. As with anything in aesthetics it's hard to find a principle with no exceptions, but there's a distinction between old plastic artifacts and the others Feser lists here: plastic was built to be cheap, and it was built to be discarded. The other items he names were not. <br /><br />How would we regard plastic discards if we did not know that about them? It's impossible to say; we've been irreparably tainted with that knowledge.<br /><br />Our revulsion may not only be against the plastic but about what it says about ourselves: that we have taken the route of building things for ourselves that are functional and cheap, but which we haven't cared for, not even from the very first use.<br /><br />(Where it was not built to be cheap, or to be discarded, I doubt we would find it so ugly in the end. Is a child's discarded plastic doll really that awful?)Tom Gilsonhttp://www.thinkingchristian.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-75052048626377640032014-02-18T00:55:57.113-08:002014-02-18T00:55:57.113-08:00Water water every where, including 60% of the huma...Water water every where, including 60% of the human body.<br />The human body is essentially structured water.<br />Water contains and transmits information, as do homeopathic remedies.<br />Water also responds to human emotion and prayer too, as the work of Masaru Emoto has shown. <br />What are the implications of Emoto's work for human beings due to the fact that the human body is 60% water?<br />Water is of course an ancient symbol that has many associations with Spiritual Life.<br />The Japanese cosmology is very much associated with water. Many classical shakahuchi songs are about water.<br /><br />It could be said that the principle of Spiritual Life has to do with the transformation of water, in which you free up your usual solid mortal consideration, and through which you become transformable, watery, alive, fluid in your breathing and gracefull in your movements, and your Spirit-Life begins.<br /><br />The life force that animates human beings is water. Emotion is water. I is H20. I = H20. <br />I, meaning the sense of independent consciousness, or body-mind, equals water.<br />Wherever water can be discovered to be, if you engage a profound feeling level investigation on it, if you enter into its molecular and atomic domain, then there is only H or intrinsic Happiness.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48242827622536119192014-02-17T17:22:02.037-08:002014-02-17T17:22:02.037-08:00Anonymous Edward on February 16, 2014 at 10:38 AM ...Anonymous Edward on February 16, 2014 at 10:38 AM said:<br /><br /><i>What would be good is an online Aristotelian-Thomist forum; a centralised place where people can post questions without dragging comments on this blog (and on others) off-topic.<br /><br />Does anyone know of such a thing?</i><br /><br />If you're on Facebook, head over to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/TeamAquinas/" rel="nofollow">Thomism Discussion Group</a>.Kielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15905861091652423451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48293816534162016432014-02-17T17:11:37.981-08:002014-02-17T17:11:37.981-08:00I'm surprised that that incredibly pretentious...<i>I'm surprised that that incredibly pretentious scene from American Beauty wasn't mentioned. The one where they're watching the plastic bag "dance" in the wind. This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB0th8vNLxo</i><br /><br />Easily explained. One of several subthemes running through the film is mystical experience. Actually, it's mysticism lite, the possibility of contemplation of nature evoking states of bliss. Everything is beautiful, because it is capable of evoking bliss when viewed in the right way. The plastic bag blowing in the wind was beautiful because it Ricky's first experience of viewing the world this way, not because of some special virtue of plastic bags. It could have been anything, that's the point.<br /><br />Also, Lester's final monologue, after being shot.<br />Jinzanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04155467948613318531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-35925328495414406932014-02-17T16:19:18.050-08:002014-02-17T16:19:18.050-08:00I think that Justin and PatrickH have just about n...I think that Justin and PatrickH have just about nailed it. I’m going to say the same thing in a different way.<br /><br />Plastic, unlike glass and tin, is an organic material, and it decays. This makes it less easily restored, and more like an old banana, which is no longer a thing of beauty.<br /><br />I say “just about”, because my explanation does not account for the beauty of drift wood. Nevertheless, I think that plastic’s decay is an important part of the explanation.Figulushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13549064050271896212noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-25761360234578248712014-02-17T15:34:29.339-08:002014-02-17T15:34:29.339-08:00Ed: Water has a substantial form insofar as its pr...Ed: <i>Water has a substantial form insofar as its properties and causal powers are irreducible to those of hydrogen and oxygen, whereas the properties and causal powers of an axe (Stump’s example) are reducible to those of its parts.</i><br /><br />They are? What properties of water are irreducible in this way? Certainly some properties can be explained in terms of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up a molecule of water (e.g. why water expands when it freezes). If there were some property that contradicted the behaviour of atoms that happened to be stuck together, that would be a big blow to reductionism. (Well, lots of hands would be waving it off, but I would've thought it would make bigger news.) But there's nothing to stop a substance from having the same properties as its (ostensible) parts would, so surely we could never know for certain. <br /><br /><br />Neal: <i>Off topic! But think I would love to get a Prof Feser review of the new Robocop remake STAT!</i><br /><br />On-topic: Too much plastic, not enough metal. <br /><br />(Maybe someone should try making a Wood-o-cop? People would go for that, right? Friendly, appealing, with a built-in truncheon...)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21280415385421392172014-02-17T15:18:56.907-08:002014-02-17T15:18:56.907-08:00In response to where plastic is used because it...In response to where plastic is used because it's the best material. I have a rifle with a fiberglass stock. It's superior to the more conventional wooden stock, even though the latter is often considered more beautiful. The fiberglass stock doesn't warp from humidity, it doesn't expand or shrink because of temperature variations (wintertime hunting, for instance), it's lighter than wood or metal, and it's a "drop-in" fit for the rifle. From many standpoints, it's superior to alternatives.Joseph P. Martinohttp://www.book-resistancetotyranny.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56363896942935562972014-02-17T15:03:28.448-08:002014-02-17T15:03:28.448-08:00Ian: why do we find some animals aesthetically ple...Ian: <i>why do we find some animals aesthetically pleasing (e.g. a tiger, an eagle, a butterfly), but others we find repulsive (e.g. a rat, a cockroach, a snake)?</i><br /><br />I think this is mostly down to the difficulty in viewing them in a purely aesthetic light — thoughts of plague and poison are too readily intertwined with any thoughts of rats and snakes (or perhaps thoughts of cold barren desolation with mountains). Is a healthy, non-mangy, non-flea-bitten rat really any less pretty than a hamster? And once you remove the dangerous head, lots of people find snakes quite fashionable enough to wear as belts. (Personally, I've always found snakes to be aesthetically pleasing — from afar. But bugs are just ugly, ick!)<br /><br />Sandymount: <i>Alain de Botton in his book architecture of happiness noted how the public hated the ugly Dutch windmills when they came out much as we do the modern ones today.</i><br /><br />Interesting — I never understood why some people hated the newfangled windmills so much. Plastic doesn't "fit in" to the natural world the way wood and metal do (again, they were designed that way!), but anything natural — in the metaphysical, not ecological sense — of course fits in to some degree. And any kind of windmill looks beautiful to me, at least somewhat, because it has to fit the physics of aerodynamics. The curve of the blades has to be natural in order to work, and so there is an inherent elegance in their very structure. Of course, the dull colours don't help, but a nice paint job would help with that. <br /><br /><i>How are we supposed to find beauty objective when there are so many examples when the same thing across time and peopls have opposite values?</i><br /><br />I don't think there are really that many. The exceptions stick out just because there is such a widespread baseline against which to measure them. (Similarly to the parallel argument re morality.) Aquinas says "the senses delight in things duly proportioned" — subjectively, because they are the senses of subjects — but he refers to "<i>the</i> senses", not "my senses" or "your senses" as though they worked differently; there are just "human senses". Of course, you or I may suffer this or that imperfection in our senses; or we may be subject to cultural biases, and so on; but none of this shows that there is not an essential objective foundation upon which the accidental differences rest.<br /><br />Glenn: <i>"we had both seen materials we considered at the time to be [ugly plastic], but this conclusion was arrived at somewhat intuitively. We agreed that 'we know it when we see it,' but that further analysis was difficult."</i><br /><br />Which in one way, should not be surprising: when it comes to food, I can digest it when I eat it, but it hardly follows that therefore I have an ability to put an explanation into words of how digestion works. What would be surprising is if someone then argued that digestion didn't really exist, or was in the mind of the digester!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-77808427597518908932014-02-17T14:56:04.432-08:002014-02-17T14:56:04.432-08:00Scott: "Now, why is that?"
What an unexp...Scott: <i>"Now, why is that?"<br />What an unexpected, fascinating, and deep question. I don't know the answer either, but discussing it should prove very interesting.</i><br /><br />Intelligent design? Plastic excels in certain practical applications because, after all, that's precisely what is was made for. Wood and metal, on the other hand, were obviously designed to have valuable aesthetic as well as practical properties, and indeed to age in a deliberately beautiful way. Or at least potentially do so — it's easy to find ugly examples of rusty, misshapen metal or splintery, rotten wood. <br /><br />Indeed, one of the reasons people are delighted when they find rusting hulks or other deteriorating masses that look pleasing is because most of the time, such things do in fact look ugly. (Frankly, I'm not that impressed with the shot of the sunken tank.) Even more relevantly, I think, is that many of the worthy instances look <i>interesting</i> rather than beautiful. That is, what we are appreciating is something more abstract than merely the way it looks visually. Misshapen rusting heaps may appeal in terms of geometry or symmetry — and such things can of course apply to piles of plastic, assuming some other consideration doesn't cancel that out. So flip Scott's question zero around: are old metal/wood/glass really beautiful, or only in exceptional cases? (Cf. TZ's point about random piles of glass and metal.)<br /><br />I think the suggestions so far are on the right track. Plastic wasn't built to cope with getting dirty and broken... but wood grows in dirt, of course it copes better!<br /><br /><br />Glenn: <i>(Indeed, imagine jumping out of a plane with a parachute made of wood, stone, steel, ceramic, etc. rather than nylon. Yikes.)</i><br /><br />Well, parachutes used to be made out of silk. I guess it rots "better" than plastic, but as a fairly uniform, somewhat stuctureless, "boring" expanse of clean white cloth, I expect that an old silk parachute left lying around for years to get dirty and torn would not look very nice either. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-4334471898114061082014-02-17T08:20:28.106-08:002014-02-17T08:20:28.106-08:00@PatrickH:
"Is there any way I can remove th...@PatrickH:<br /><br />"Is there any way I can remove the first comment?"<br /><br />Unfortunately it doesn't appear that you were logged in when you posted either of those.<br /><br />On the comments page, you have the option to delete each of your logged-in posts, in the form of a clicky little icon at the very end, right after the posting time and date. Appropriately enough in view of the topic under discussion, the icon is a tiny trash can/rubbish bin.<br /><br />But your two posts will stay on and on, never changing, never disappearing, like . . . plastic.<br /><br />(Unless Ed deletes one of them, of course.)Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-10356214395056552202014-02-17T00:52:00.566-08:002014-02-17T00:52:00.566-08:00Sorry about the double post. Is there any way I ca...Sorry about the double post. Is there any way I can remove the first comment?PatrickHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04864910409538457529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57949961975311578362014-02-17T00:49:44.399-08:002014-02-17T00:49:44.399-08:00Perhaps plastic's not aging well indicates tha...Perhaps plastic's not aging well indicates that in some way it violates our expectation that it should be subject to change, specifically corruption. A plastic thing is not generated as a substantial form, but even as an artifact, it seems somehow to resist corruption, in the sense of its own ending (I know corruption does not mean the ending of an artifact). <br /><br />So a plastic body can break, get dirty, but it won't somehow genuinely disintegrate. It just keeps on keeping on, not able to let go, not able to become something else. It was made from something previous, but it won't allow anything new to be made from it. <br /><br />Plastic is ugly when it refuses to "corrupt" gracefully and let something new come to be from its own ending. It won't end...and so nothing new can come from it. <br /><br />Old plastic is like a kind of living death. It has the ugliness of something ungenerous, frozen, parasitical and ungiving, past its due date, but still there, cluttering up the landscape.<br /><br />Old plastic is selfish and barren. It's like it thinks that if it has no children, it will never die.PatrickHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-73961405106585877302014-02-17T00:41:38.387-08:002014-02-17T00:41:38.387-08:00Perhaps plastic's not aging well indicates tha...Perhaps plastic's not aging well indicates that in some way it violates our expectation that it should, as a natural or artifactual body be subject to change, specifically generation and corruption. It is, I suppose, generated, assuming a plastic thing is a substantial form. But it seems somehow to resist corruption. It can break, get dirty, but it just keeps on keeping on, not able to let go, not able to become something else. It was generated from some previous form, as generation requires the corruption of something previous. But plastic doesn't have the good grace to let go, allow something else to be generated from its corruption.<br /><br />Plastic is ugly when it refuses to corrupt gracefully and let something new come to be from its ending. It won't end...and so nothing new can be generated from it. Old plastic is like a kind of living death. It has the ugliness of something ungenerous, frozen, parasitical and ungiving.<br /><br />Old plastic is selfish and barren.PatrickHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-13944698590449776632014-02-16T21:02:14.593-08:002014-02-16T21:02:14.593-08:00I'm surprised that that incredibly pretentious...I'm surprised that that incredibly pretentious scene from American Beauty wasn't mentioned. The one where they're watching the plastic bag "dance" in the wind. This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB0th8vNLxo<br /><br />I'm not sure, in that scene, if it's the plastic bag that's beautiful or if it's the Wind, the movement. I'm thinking it might be the wind and movement, as I think if the bag were paper (or anything else) the image would have been just as beautiful. That said, I'm not actually sure if the image Is beautiful, or if the director just wants to say that it is for the sake of the argument he's making.<br /><br />I think maybe that's the exact reason why the director chose a plastic bag. That is, he chose it Because plastic bags are ugly, are necessarily Trash. The point of the movie being that beautiful things really exist, even within or among ugly things, if we look to see them. Or that beautiful things can be birthed within truly unbeautiful things.Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10872384675415092134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-59006252155477461032014-02-16T13:35:02.240-08:002014-02-16T13:35:02.240-08:00Regarding the OP on another note...
What I always...Regarding the OP on another note...<br /><br />What I always found funny about that scene is that, as near as I can tell... it was actually really good advice the character was being given. It's a little like someone telling you 'McDonalds' in the 1970s.Crudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04178390947423928444noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-19640807482017481122014-02-16T13:26:17.549-08:002014-02-16T13:26:17.549-08:00Not certain where to ask you this Edward F.
But ha...Not certain where to ask you this Edward F.<br />But have you ever written about Aquinas's mystical experience? The one that lead him to make the comment about his work being like straw?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-43689296867605650752014-02-16T10:38:03.255-08:002014-02-16T10:38:03.255-08:00Sorry to hijack this thread. I've been lurking...Sorry to hijack this thread. I've been lurking, and very occasionally posting, on this blog for a while now. Many of my questions have little relevance to the blog post they're posted under. Other people seem to be doing something very similar.<br /><br />What would be good is an online Aristotelian-Thomist forum; a centralised place where people can post questions without dragging comments on this blog (and on others) off-topic.<br /><br />Does anyone know of such a thing?<br /><br />EdwardAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76626142819030722472014-02-16T10:34:51.131-08:002014-02-16T10:34:51.131-08:00I deal a lot with plastics as an architectural des...I deal a lot with plastics as an architectural designer, and especially as someone who is focused more directly on the fabrication side of the process. Plastic, as a material, does posses morphological advantages that simply cannot be found in many other materials. The relatively low temperature at which it melts, and its ability to take on various forms based on the intelligent molds is nearly unparalleled. <br /><br />It seems that we find plastic aesthetically displeasing whenever it A. ages (which it does not do well), and B. is essentially pollution. Where sunken ships are effectively reclaimed by nature, by virtue of steel or iron's tendency to oxidize and become and rust, the indefinite and (oftentimes) non-biodegradable qualities of plastic ensures that, as a material, it is effectively immune to meaningful decay. <br /><br />I believe that people find it desirable when things are reclaimed by natural forces, or are part of a natural cycle of decay and renewal. Plastic is the odd-man out. It does not decay beautifully, and it can never be reclaimed by nature do in large part to its chemical composition. <br /><br />That may be why we find it ugly. We know, even subconsciously, that plastic exists in kind of material anarchy. It does not submit to the natural order of things in the same way other materials do. The Fezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05936496462409155664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-72194261818480145542014-02-16T07:08:33.976-08:002014-02-16T07:08:33.976-08:00Btw, scene from The Graduate mentioned in the OP i...Btw, scene from The Graduate mentioned in the OP is also mentioned in Plastic: A Toxic Love Story:<br /><br /><i>It's hard to say when the polymer rapture began to fade, but it was gone by 1967 when the film </i>The Graduate<i> came out. Somewhere along the line -- aided surely by a flood of plastic products such as pink flamingos, vinyl siding, Corfam shows -- plastic's penchant for inexpensive imitation came to be seen as cheap ersatz. So audiences knew exactly why Benjamin Braddock was so repelled when a family friend took him aside for some helpful career advice. "I just want to say one word to you... Plastics!" The word no longer conjured an enticing horizon of possibility but rather a bland, airles future, as phony as Mrs. Robinson's smile.</i><br /><br />It continues,<br /><br /><i>Today, few other materials we rely on carry such a negative set of associations or stir such visceral disgust. Normal Mailer called it "a malign force loose in the universe . . . the social equivalent of cancer."</i><br /><br />But we already know that. We just don't yet have any clear-cut reasons as to why it's like this.Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-35922965462338769982014-02-16T06:48:33.141-08:002014-02-16T06:48:33.141-08:00Crude,
It seems likely that there a number of thi...Crude,<br /><br />It seems likely that there a number of things for which no material other than plastic might be well-suited. For according to <a href="http://plasticsmakeitpossible.com/2012/01/professor-plastic-how-many-types-of-plastics-are-there/" rel="nofollow">Professor Plastic</a>, "there actually are <i>thousands</i> of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics." And according to <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=9LyGHqqIKT4C&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=%22The+word+plastic+is+itself+cause+for+confusion%22&source=bl&ots=4qoG4hKqiP&sig=D1lOV672VohMnQ1MFDNyRJKEKfc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JskAU-KzOemIyAGGooD4Dw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22The%20word%20plastic%20is%20itself%20cause%20for%20confusion%22&f=false" rel="nofollow">Plastic: A Toxic Love Story</a>, "The word <i>plastic</i> is itself cause for confusion. We use it in the singular and indiscriminately, to refer to any artificial material. But there are tens of thousands of different plastics. And rather than making up a single family of materials, they're more a collection of loosely related clans." (Although <a href="http://plasticsmakeitpossible.com/2012/01/professor-plastic-how-many-types-of-plastics-are-there/" rel="nofollow">Professor Plastic</a> points out that, "[E]ven though the number of plastics is unclear, plastics makers tend to group plastics into two general classes: thermoplastics and thermosets.")<br /><br />As for something larger and more industrial, I'm also at a loss to think of something given the initial constraints.<br /><br />- - - - -<br /><br />The family just north of us when I was a kid had a fireplace in the living room. I remember we'd sometimes be over there, and the father would entertain us by tossing bits of wiring into the fireplace. The wire was copper, but the surrounding insulation was plastic. And he'd toss in bits of wire with different colored coatings, and we'd be delighted watching the resulting Technicolor flames. (Eye-candy before computers, it was.) So, in a not very practical, local way, old plastic sometimes might be put to (something resembling) good use without first recycling it.Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-59455111272835350012014-02-16T06:22:02.752-08:002014-02-16T06:22:02.752-08:00I don't think any of these speculations quite ...I don't think any of these speculations quite get at it, and I don't know if mine will, but here goes. <br /><br />Plastic is used for disposable items meant to be thrown away sooner (like garbage bags) or later (like bleach bottles, toilet seats, old toys) so little attention goes into their design, perhaps excepting toys. But while plastic items deteriorate, they do not biodegrade, or not for so long that they might as well last forever. In a sense, plastic is a kind of category error. <br /><br />All the other objects to which you refer will grow old in their time, deteriorating gently back into the earth. Plastic will do so too, eventually, but it takes so long that our Wonder Bread wrappers and Javex bottles, I've heard, may outlive all other artifacts of our civilization. <br /><br />L. LegaultAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com