Message-ID: <970210181734_-1107287472@emout08.mail.aol.com> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 18:29:03 -0500 From: mailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM> Subject: Re: THEORY: "Knowledge is anti-entropic" -Reply To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
In a message dated 97-02-10 15:15:55 EST, mailto:JSANFORD@crs.loc.gov (Jonathan Sanford) writes:<< My deepest objection to the previous discussion was the implication that the problems are so great and the trend so deterministic that we cannot do anything to help poorer countries and we should just let the megadeath come to wipe the slate clean. I found that conclusion to be very relevant to the development orientation of this list. >>
As you know, Ehrlich has in the past advocated mass starvation as the only practical way to return the world's population to levels he has advocated . Some of our well known environmental organizations have also suggested such "solutions."
As you state, entropy has been metaphorized beyonds its moorings in physics. However, it has been widely misunderstood in its implications for our planetary future by those who understand it as the second law of thermodynamics. As a law of physics the error on this list and elsewhere in the world of the environmental movement has been--as Commoner explains--to think of the earth as a closed entropic system--an auto, or a spaceship--running on a finite fuel supply which will be exhausted shortly.
If that entropy threat is indeed blatant nonsense, as the physicists of the world suggest, we have many more than the hundred years granted to us by The Club of Rome, giving us time to create new wealth for the world to enjoy, including fish and fruits and vegetables, while we use our growing knowledge of the microcosm to substitute renewable resources for nonrenewable resources and information for matter.
Steve Eskow