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Loading... The Entropy Law and the Economic Processby Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The author is one of the few economists to understand biology, and one of the few biologists who understands economics. Uniquely, he finds the physicists' law of entropy to be a central theme.[3, 140, 201] The key is the irreversibility -- older, colder, darker, slower -- of all these systems.[133] Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was a Romanian mathematician, statistician and economist who remains influential today for this 1971 magnum opus in which he offers proof that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. "The entropy of the physical universe increases constantly because there is a continuous and irrevocable qualitative degradation of order into chaos. The entropic nature of the economic process, which degrades natural resources and pollutes the environment, constitutes the present danger. The earth is entropically winding down naturally, and economic advance is accelerating the process. Man must learn to ration the meager resources he has so profligately squandered if he is to survive in the long run when the entropic degradation of the sun will be the crucial factor, 'for surprising as it may seem, the entire stock of natural resources is not worth more than a few days of sunlight'." - Library Journal. This work draws together mathematics, biology, physics, social sciences and economic theory to support his creative but well-grounded conclusions. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen understands that ultimately economics is political: He quotes F. A. Hayek to say that "the principal problem in understanding the actions of men is to understand how they think--how their minds work". [364] And we have not [yet] developed a measuring instrument for political will -- a "politiscope".[364] This work is fundamental to the study of humankind and our propensities. It provides tools for learning how to do that so there will be no more "forgotten" people. Scientists are the "peace army" necessary to turn toward this outcome. And with the Sun dimming toward a 4.5 billion year extinction, we don't have a moment to lose. no reviews | add a review
The author, a mathematical economist, has been continually preoccupied not only with creating new mathematical models used in economic theorizing, but also with the delicate epistemological problem of economics. Since the publication in 1966 of his Analytical Economics: Issues and Problems there has been great demand for elaboration, expansion, and further refining of the ideas he broached in his seminal introductory essay, "Some Orientation Issues in Economics." The result is this new volume. Its central theme is that the economic process, instead of being a mechanical analogue as traditionally represented in mathematical economics, is an entropic process. In the ultimate analysis man struggles for low entropy, and economic scarcity is the reflection of the Entropy Law, which is the most economic in nature of all natural laws. Thermodynamics itself is presented by the author as the physics of economic value and man's economic activity as analogous (though not identical) to that of the purposive sorting of the famous Maxwellian demon. Economic activity is in fact an extension and a complement of man's biological evolution. In it, man can use exosomatic organs, i.e., organs with which he is not endowed biologically but which have evolved through a process of mutation, selection, and diffusion similar to that of biological evolution. For wherever there is evolution, the author argues, there is the work of the Entropy Law with its irrevocable qualitative Change. This point leads the author to an extensive examination of the limitations of arithmomorphic models in all sciences. He argues that no complete description of reality, no philosophical argument (not even that of the ultrapositivists), no creative thought can dispense with dialectical concepts and reasoning, which he views somewhat differently from Hegel. The tight-knit excursus ends with an analysis of some general economic issues, from that of the analytical representation of a process to that of social conflict. The author argues that, because of the very nature of exosomatic evolution, the social conflict will last under any regime as long as there is a human society. Like the essay from which it grew, the present volume will interest a broad spectrum of readers. No library descriptions found. |
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Anyway, I gave it a chance, but this book just made me angry. Perhaps I have some sort of cognitive dissonance going on with the subject matter, but he just keeps dancing around the topic. Get to the point. Thankfully I got it from the Library so I didn't have to pay anything for it. That is all I have to say. ( )