Special issue on Materials and Society: the Circular Economy SAM-13

The 13th Society and Materials conference, SAM-13, took place in Pisa, Italy, on 20 and 21 May, 2019. The present issue of Matériaux & Techniques collects a representative selection of 9 papers given at the conference, highlighting its main themes. These went through a peer review with the Journal. The conference focused on contemporary and emerging issues related to materials and energy, with a strong emphasis on new methodologies, experimental approaches and interdisciplinarity, from hard sciences and engineering to social sciences and humanities. The first two papers examine technical issues related to materials through unusual filters in industrial ecology or material processing, i.e. philosophy and epistemology: – JP. Birat of IF Steelman [1] discusses the matter of the circular economy by considering that reused or recycled materials are akin to a palimpsest (an old manuscript that is erased and on which a new text is written) on the one hand and that the circular economy is a heterotopia (a space separated from usual physical space by specific rules, even though both do communicate) on the other hand. The method proves capable of discussing all the features of the circular economy in a compact manner and may be casting light on unexplored areas; – H. Tveit and L. Kolbensein of NTNU [2] discuss the special status of silicon as a material by analyzing the specifics of its entropy function, which are definitely unique compared to those of a commonmetal. They go on to say that this makes the production of silicon fairly difficult on the one hand, what they call the hate relationship, and, on the other hand, transforms silicon into a material with outstanding properties and an especially social value, what they call the love relationship. Entropy, a very classical thermodynamic function, is thus used as a kind of metrics to analyze the social value of this particular material.