Entropy: A new world view Jeremy Rifkin / Ted Howard.

Viking editions, September 1980 Excerpts: Hope is the feeling that what it is desired is possible to attain. This book is about hope, the hope that comes from shattering false illusions and replacing them with new truths. To a civilization nurtured on the modern notion of a future without physical constrains and a world without material boundaries, the truths of the Entropy Law will at first appear sobering, even somber. That is because this law defines the ultimate physical boundaries within which we are constrain to act. If we look at this law as the truth that cam set us free. We will be able to be the optimal harbingers of the new age. Our modern world view took shape around 435 years ago. Our present generations, caught between the old paradigm of materialism and the new entropy paradigm just starting to emerge 35 years ago, will begin to marvel at how we could have believed in principles and axioms so obviously false. Unable to completely shed our native world view we shall take on the new entropy law paradigm as a second language, never completely comfortable with it and never able to full y articulate it into our daily routines. For our grandchildren generations the entropic world view will be like second nature; they will not think about it, they will merely live with it, unconscious of its hold over them, as we have been so long unconscious of the hold Newtonian mechanics have had over us. . The entropy law is a law governing the horizontal world of time and space. It is mute, however, when it comes with the vertical world of spiritual transcendence. The spiritual plane it is not governed by the ironclad dictates of the Entropy Law. The spirit is a non-material dimension where there are no boundaries and no fixed limits to attend to. The relationship of the physical to the spiritual world is a relationship of a small part to the larger unbound whole within which it unfolds. While the Entropy Law governs the world of time, space and matter, it is, in turn, governed by the primordial spiritual forces that conceive it. The way a civilization organize its physical reality and the importance it attaches to the material plane of existence determine how favorable the conditions are for seeking spiritual enlightment. The way humanity decides to interact with the physical laws of thermodynamics, in establishing a framework for physical existence is of crucial importance in whether humankinds spiritual journey is allowed to flourish or languish. Historians and anthropologist have long speculated over why a particular world view emerges at a particular time and place in history. This book will suggest an answer to the question: that the energy condition of the environment sets the broad frame for the world view that emerges. To demonstrate that claim, it is important that we remove ourselves from our own world view just long enough to take a hard look at how our own perception of reality have been shaped over the centuries.

Greeks and Five Ages of History; Cycles and Decay Horace mused time depreciates the value of the world Hesiod description of history; golden, silver, brass, heroic and iron. The idea of history as a decaying cyclical process heavily influenced the Greek conception of how society should be ordered. Plato and Aristotle believed that the best social order was the one that experienced the fewer changes; there was no room in their world view for the concept of continued change and growth. The ideal state was the one that slowed down the process the process of decay as much as possible. The Greeks associated greater change and growth with greater decay and d chaos. Their goal, then, was to hand down to the next generation a world as much preserved from change as possible. Although the basic facts with which the thermodynamics is concerned have very likely been known to humankind since the dawn of civilization, they were incorporated into the edifice of science only a hundred years ago. Some people believe that someday the Entropy Law will be refuted or we will be able to find ways to adapt its principles to our present time reality and needs. Unfortunately, such believes bears on mankinds entropic predicament of our species emerges as far more complicated than we all now think in reacting to the present energy crisis. First, the recipe pf a steady state can no longer be considered as ecological salvation (which does not mean to repudiate also ethical and social merits that Herman Daly invokes in its support). Second, a valid technology must be able to maintain its material scaffold as long as its specific fuel is available. We must be careful of not falling into developing parasite solutions of current technologies, and foster false and dangerous hopes in the public mind. The Entropy Law its extensive form of sets material limits to the specific mode of life of the human species, limits that tie together present and future generations in an adventure without parallel in our knowledge. Because the importance of these limitations has come into plain view only recently and because the entropic abundance of the last two hundred years or so is rapidly approaching its end, we must reassess and remodel our approach to economic, political and social evolution. Jeremy Rifkin sets this entire problem in a convincing light, not cluttered by unsubstantial technical essays. In writing about Entropy Law, one runs the risk of falling victim to the fashion of seeking to impress by complex, extended, but empty exercises, avoiding frequent exercises about formal parallelism imagined to exist between entropic transformations and social phenomena, thermodynamics sets a limit ti these phenomena but does not govern them. For its timely (1980) educative value and for its pronouncedly human underpinning this volume should have an honored place on any individual or public bookshelf, to spread the commandment suggested by the present turning point in mankinds life on this planet: Love thy species as thyself