on 10/28/00 13:53, Steven Bissell at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Cycles are inefficient, they are not issues of entropy. Entropy is a factor
> of the natural loss of energy available to do work in a closed system.
> Cycles are inefficient because, well because they are inefficient. The loss
> of energy in biological (open) systems is *not* entropy. Most of that energy
> is still available to do work in other ways. I think, however, that you have
> made me think about why this concerns me in so far as environmental ethics
> are concerned.

Steven

I know full well what entropy is, having done rather extensive study into it
and its implications.

1) Entropy _is_ inefficiency in the strictly defined sense of the term. Any
inefficiency you can point to is entropic.

2) We do not live in a closed system in energy terms.

"Cycles are inefficient because, well because they are inefficient."

That doesn't cut it. Cycles are inefficient because for every single
transaction, from the micro to the macroscopic, there is an entropy penalty.
That doesn't just mean less energy comes out than went in. Entropy concerns
_matter/energy_. Now we know these are both conserved; _however_, big
however, there is a _qualitative_ change that takes place when low-entropy
matter-energy is turned into high (whether it's gas turned into waste or
rich soil washed into the river...it's the same idea). Yes the energy is
still there somewhere, so is the soil, but what was once in an ordered,
concentrated, _usable_ state, is turned into totally unusable. We cannot
recollect the hydrocarbon pollution and turn it back into fuel; we cannot
recollect the soil from the rivers and oceans and turn it back into
humus-rich growing media; we cannot take a scrambled egg and make it return
back into its shell in original form.

Energy is not some thing that can just be used over and over from place to
place, for the reasons outlined above. Again, all of the disruptions of
natural cycles, hydrologic, air, nutrient, etc. can be seen to stem from our
over-consumption and waste of low-entropy matter-energy (matter/energy are
not separate terms).

> As descriptive science they are
> valuable in understand how things work, but not of much use in prescribing
> how we "ought" to react to nature. Isn't this Hume's "naturalistic fallacy?"
> You cannot logically derive an "ought" from an "is." If ecology is "merely"
> an empirical science, it gives us very little in the way of developing a
> meaningful ethic.

Much to say here; thanks for the stimulating points. In Hume's context, I
believe he was referring to the derivation of human-human ethics from
natural observation; in Hume's time, they were still working on the
extension of ethics to all humans, let alone to the environment or animals.
The development of an environmental ethic is very, very different indeed. As
far as this goes, and as far as I'm concerned, it is patently obvious that
many of the crises we face today (whether environmental or otherwise) stem
from our refusal to derive "ought" from the "is" of the natural systems at
work all around us. In thinking that we can derive an "ought" from anywhere
else, we slip quickly into the realm of sheer hubris. We petty humans have
the capacity, insight, foresight, wisdom to decide what's right and wrong
completely independent of the world we live in? _That's_ the problem I
think, the techno-optimists' idea that he/she can figure it out without a
care as to what we've been given.

Obviously, I think ecology is much more than an empirical science. Just as I
think it is a ridiculous misrepresentation to try to turn economics into a
science (instead of the philosophy it started out as).

Adam



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