From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>A given quantity of stuff is not a constant. That's the
>point I was trying to make. Technological advance
>(advance in knowledge in general...)
There is no creation of matter/energy Brad. Technology can not repeal the
laws of thermodynamics. As a special treat, I just archived a paper by one
of our most original thinkers: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.
See selections from ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS: Myths about Mankind's
Entropic Problem at http://dieoff.com/page148.htm . Here are the first two
paragraphs:
"Hardly anyone would nowadays openly profess a belief in the immortality of
mankind. Yet many of us prefer not to exclude this possibility; to this end,
we endeavor to impugn any factor that could limit mankind's life. The most
natural rallying idea is that mankind's entropic dowry is virtually
inexhaustible, primarily because of man's inherent power to defeat the
Entropy Law in some way or another."
"To begin with, there is the simple argument that, just as has happened with
many natural laws, the laws on which the finiteness of accessible resources
rests will be refuted in turn. The difficulty of this historical argument is
that history proves with even greater force, first, that in a finite space
there can be only a finite amount of low entropy and, second, that low
entropy continuously and irrevocably dwindles away. The impossibility of
perpetual motion (of both kinds) is as firmly anchored in history as the law
of gravitation."
It's quite good. Give it a read at http://dieoff.com/page148.htm
Jay
