----- Original Message -----
From: "Hank Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: "globalchange" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:30 PM
Subject: [Global Change: 1892] http://www.nd.edu/~philinst/energy.html
(Sayre, Notre Dame, well worth reading)
> Chapter 2 Entropy and Disorder
<...>
> Chapter 17 Values for Survival
> Chapter 18 What Can Be Done? What Can One Do?
I am pleased to see no leap of logic straight from entropy to "what can one
do", putting the question of human ethical values in its proper place as the
fulcrum upon which human action is weighed and decided. Therefore worthy of
a closer look, IMO.
*repost of an ancient gem*
Physicist Alvin Weinberg, in a review of _Entropy: A New World View_ by
Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard in _Population and Development Review_, Vol. 7,
No. 2. (Jun., 1981), pp. 345-348, writes:
"Stalin demonstrated that social movements, ordained by the workings of
grand scientific laws, too often are captured by human beings driven by lust
for power. The result is a quantum increase in human suffering, justified
always by the claim that the new social configuration conforms more closely
to the Laws of Science -- whether the dialectical materialism of Marx or the
second law of thermodynamics of Jeremy Rifkin. Let the new Entropists
remember this lesson of history before they reject so easily the more humane
approach of the technological optimists for staving off the dilemmas of
Malthus or of Georgescu-Roegen." p. 348
*end quote*
-dl
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