Idea Sea

(This article was written in 2006)

We know humans never stay at a constant level of happiness from whatever we get. I am curious about how to answer this question: at what level of achievement, we will be able to reach the highest level of happiness.

First, the key variables in this problem are identified as,
H: Happiness
E: Expectation (>= 0)
A: Achievement (>=0)

So I propose the model with its assumptions to analyze the questions raised above.

Assumption I:

An individual’s happiness is proportionate to the gap between his achievement (what he has) and his expectation (what he wants to get), instead of the absolute level of his achievement. In another word, how much you own won’t determine how happy you are. However, how much more you gain than what you have expected will bring you a lot of happiness. Therefore, H (happiness) should be a monotonously increasing function of (A-E). Though I am aware that there are many other ways to describe the relationship, here I tentatively propose a simple linear model as below.
( Eq.1) H = m * (A - E) + n
where m is called an emotion coefficient, and n is an emotion constant. In particular, m > 0, and n > 0. n indicates the happiness level when the person right achieves what he has expected. This model is illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 Relationship between Happiness, Achievement and Expectation

Assumption II:

We speculate that people tend to expect more as they achievement rises. Therefore, I propose an exponential relationship between E (expectation) and A (achievement), though there could be other choices for modeling this too. This assumes that, when human achieve something, they would expect more on that base of their achievement. The formula to describe this assumption is as below.
(Eq.2) E = k * exp ( l * A )
where k is called ambition constant, and l is ambition coefficient. In particular, k > 0, and l > 0. It says, more ambitious persons have bigger k and l. k indicates the initial ambition level when his achievement is 0. This is demonstrated in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. Relationship between Expectation and Achievement

We insert Eq.2 into Eq.1, and then obtain,
( Eq.3) H(A) = m * ( A - ( k * exp( l * A ) ) ) + n
Take the derivatives of H with respect to A, then we get,
(Eq.4) H’(A) = m ( 1 - k * l * exp ( l * A ) )
(Eq.5) H”(A) = - m * k * l^2 * exp ( l * A ) < 0
Because H”(A) < 0, H(A) function is convex, the maximum of H is achieved when H’(A) = 0. According to Eq.4, we get
(Eq.6) A* = - log ( k * l ) / l
Based on Eq.6, we know,
When k*l >= 1, A* <= 0
When k*l < 1, A* > 0
These two situations are illustrated in the Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. Maximum Happiness and Related Achievement
Note: k and l are ambition factors in different aspects.

Therefore, for people with kl >= 1, since A*<=0 and the function is convex, their maximum happiness is reached at the time they haven’t achieved anything (A=0). For people with kl < 1, their maximum happiness is reached at some point of receiving achievements at certain level.

The indication here for people with greater ambition (kl>=1) is that, achieving more makes them less happy. This sounds striking!

This could also be a reminder for such “ambitious” people who want to get bigger happiness via making greater achievement. They’d better stay home doing nothing. Alternatively, they can change their personality first (change their k and l, but can this happen?), and then try making achievements to increase happiness.

Note: due to the simplicity, this model assumes the risk of being misleading…It is just for fun…

Organizing Scientific Research in Multi-Dimensions: an Institutional Approach Pursuing both Holism and Specialization of Disciplines

Jianxi Luo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
December, 2008
luo@mit.edu

Abstract

This article proposes an executable institutional approach to advance sciences by organically and multi-dimensionally facilitating inter-disciplinary cooperation. The idea originated from my observations and experience as a doctoral student at MIT’s cutting-edge Engineering Systems Division. The approach builds a new type of organizational unit within the original organization. Such a unit hosts a new discipline that is fundamentally holistic, and generally meaningful and complementary to most of the traditional disciplines. The essence of this institutional approach is the creation and integration of a new dimension of holistic scientific disciplines to the initial dimension of specialized traditional disciplines. The new dimension is valuable not just in advancing scientific research in specialized traditional disciplines by intensifying interactions, but also in nurturing the emergence and evolution of new kinds of sciences. This is a system approach to organically integrate holism and reductionism, and to harmonize generalization and specialization in scientific pursuits, in order to tackle the multi-dimensional natures of the critical but complex contemporary challenges to humankind. The specific designs of such an institutional approach implemented by MIT are discussed in this paper. However, an institution should implement this approach according to its own unique situations and needs in order for the creation and integration of a meaningful second dimension.

Specialization vs. Generalization and Reductionism vs. Holism

Over its own history of evolution, science and knowledge have been divided into disciplines and sub disciplines. Mainly driven by reductionism, scientists and engineers often tend to specialize themselves in order to go deeper in their chosen disciplines. In fact, specializations driven by reductionism have contributed largely to the major historical advancements of sciences and technologies, which led us to today.

A closely connected group of topics and knowledge pieces which attracted extensive research attention in certain period of time would become an established discipline and receive a name or paradigm for it later. This has been evidenced in most of the contemporary universities. Reductionism has led universities to advance sciences rapidly since 19^th century. Since then, many of the world’s historical and prestigious universities had built rigid disciplines, often operationalized by the departmental structures. The department structures have the advantages and the disadvantages. The key advantage comes from specialization, and a key disadvantage comes from competition between departments for resources and their resistance to cooperation [1]. The specialization and reductionism may also incur boundaries of interactions that further lead to unnecessary ignorance and insufficient fundamental innovation.

Nowadays, scientists and practitioners have been confronted with new challenges and new questions that are more difficult and complex than ever. We need new approaches to advance the sciences, including physical sciences and social sciences, in order to solve such complex problems as global warming, mass destructive weapon diffusion, outer space exploration, etc, and achieve grant goals. In particular, we realize the complexity of such challenges largely comes from their multidimensionality.

Considering the multi-dimensional nature of the major challenges to humankind, the future advances of sciences and our society will depend increasingly on holistic system approaches. Albert Einstein once said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” [2]. Not only this word, but also his way to establish the relativity theory has hinted that, generalization from the incentive for holism is fundamentally necessary and important for liberating the potential of specialized scientific explorations. The system approach that we need must consider all the necessary issues involved for the original question or pursuit. Often, one sub-issue by itself is already complex enough to be noted as a system when needed. By putting the angle of view at a relatively higher level, a system approach requires the new boundary of exploration should encapsulate not only the subsystem for this sub-issue but also the others involved at the original level.

However, generalization with holism is not free of cost. When a researcher generalizes the initial problem for a grant answer, he/she has to broaden the traditional intellectual search boundary, at the risk of distracting his/her attentions and failing to reach enough depth in each discipline that he/she surveys. Therefore, the approach to be advocated here is not one for generalization or inclusion of traditional disciplines, but one that pursues the benefits from organically integrating specialization and generalization (via inter-discipline cooperation) at a low cost, in order to optimize the value of inter-disciplinary interactions for significant scientific progress. In the next section, I will discuss the case of a new type of organizational unit that is aimed to advance specialized disciplines and nurture new kinds of sciences of great significance.

Case of MIT’s Engineering Systems Division

MIT’s Engineering Systems Division (ESD), founded in 1998, is a bold educational and research initiative and “department-like” academic unit that spans most traditional departments within the School of Engineering, as well as MIT’s School of Science, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Sloan School of Management. The ESD faculty and researchers hold either dual or joint appointments within ESD and one of the traditional units, such as department of physics, department of mechanical engineering, department of economics, etc, in order to fuse the departmental boundaries to some degree, to promote interactions among all the departments, and to enable ESD faculty to pursue activities that benefit both their original department and the Division [3, 4].

ESD@MIT focuses on developing methodologies to deal with the complexity, uncertainty, and the large scale of systems, which often have not only physical science dimensions, but also social science dimensions, and then understanding, designing and managing them holistically. For such goals, the Engineering Systems (ES) researches emphasize non-traditional system properties, named “ilities” [5, 6], including flexibility, sustainability, adaptability, agility, reliability, scalability, recyclability, quality, as well as robustness, security, safety, instead of such traditional design goals as function, performance, and cost. The underlying motivation for such emphasis is that, when the systems are large, dynamic and complex, the system performances are often unpredictable, and then the traditional design goals become unrealistic. For a complex system, more appropriate design goals should be such “ilities” in order to tackle its unpredictable emergent behaviors.

The need for Engineering Systems was visioned by the administration and faculties of MIT in the 1990s as a result of the confluence of a few factors, especially the growing complexity of engineering systems that are being designed, manufactured or operated, such as the aerospace and aeronautic projects, energy, environment and transportation systems, etc [3, 7].

Create the Second Dimension of Disciplines in a Research Organization

From my point of view (which could be different from that of its founders), I interpret ESD@MIT as an institutional innovation that has created a second dimension relative to the original dimension of traditional disciplines, and a new discipline on its own dimension, in the institute. Particularly, I find that, two designs of this organizational unit have distinguished ES from the traditional disciplines, such as economics and mechanical engineering, and distinguished ESD from traditional organizational units, such as a department or an interdisciplinary center: 1) the focuses on “ilities”; 2) dual appointments of the ESD faculty members.

ESD is similar to a traditional department in terms of administrations because it also appoints and promotes faculty, admits students, implements educational programs, and grants degrees. But it is not a new department in parallel with the other traditional departments. Instead, it opens a new dimension of research and education on the basis of the established traditional disciplines. This is evidenced by its focuses, the “ilities”, which are not replacements or new divisions of traditional research goals, but general complements for most of traditional ones. The interrelationships between ESD and the other departments are shown in Figure 1. It can be viewed as a horizontal unit that interacts with the vertical departments [3]. ESD has “porous boundaries” to facilitate inter-department interactions.

ESD is also not an inter-disciplinary research center. An interdisciplinary research center does not have such privileges as appointing and promoting faculty, admitting students, implementing educational degree programs. An interdisciplinary study does not add an appointment subscript to a participating professor’s title. Under the mechanism of dual or joint appointments, a typical title for an ESD professor should be like: Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Systems, Professor of Urban Planning and Engineering Systems, etc.

Engineering Systems (ES) is also intellectually distinguished from other multi-disciplinary approaches to engineering sciences and social sciences, such as Operations Research and Systems Engineering. In fact, it is expected to evolve and be established as a solid field of study. It will be a special field organically interacting and complementing with any of the other traditional fields, instead of separating from them. ES is not a calling for a multi-disciplinary work, but an emerging new discipline on a new dimension.

The creation of a new department or an interdisciplinary center would replace or separate the time and attention of the researchers from the traditional disciplines. Comparatively, the ESD setup embeds a second dimension for the shared interests and pursuits of the existing academic units and disciplines. The new disciplines on the second dimension should be characteristically different from those on the original dimension in order not to overlap and compete. The disciplines on a single dimension are parallel and separate, while the disciplines on different dimensions are not comparable but complementary because they are defined by different criteria.

In general, the use of “division” in its name appropriately captures its similarities with a “department” and dissimilarities with either a department or an interdisciplinary research center. The “division”, with its innovative organizational designs, has been the experimental place for MIT to create a second dimension of research and education on the basis of traditional disciplines. In another world, by running ESD, MIT has turned itself into a two-dimensional university.

Value of the Second Dimension

The second dimension in a research institution needs not only to add extra values to the disciplines on the traditional dimension, but also to create new values on the second dimension itself. Its general value should be holistic on the multi-dimensional space of sciences and academia.

First, the second dimension provides supports to the development of the disciplines on the first dimension respectively. Formally setting up an organizational unit on the second dimension makes cooperation among the organization units on the first dimension more common, natural, effective and efficient. Since it does not compete but complement with any traditional existing units, specialization is still well maintained in the overall organization. With the interactions intensified naturally and collective work facilitated by the new internal structure, the participating researchers will find his/her individual values in research on both dimensions which are complementary to each other.

Second, the organizational unit created on the new dimension provides a comfortable common home for researches from multiple traditional disciplines to collectively develop their shared general interests into a coherent agenda. On the second dimension, a set of newly-defined disciplines are also expected to emerge, develop and evolve into new kinds of sciences, which provide new potential to advance our scientific knowledge, methodologies, and abilities to understand and improve the world.

In particular, compared to an inter-disciplinary setting, such a design for organic integration can limit the cost of distractions for a researcher to navigate broadly/holistically, meanwhile help him/her dig deeply in his/her own specialization using new holistic theories and methodologies. The holism will essentially benefit one’s specialized work with huge potential returns in terms of creativity and fundamental advancements. Via appropriate organizational designs, the pursuits and returns on both dimensions become inseparable and holistic.

In general, such an institutional approach, which essentially creates a second dimension in a research organization, is expected to foster advancements in specialized traditional disciplines, via working in holistic modes of thought. It is also expected to generate new integrative methods and theories that can encompass the diverse issues associated with the most complex and critical problems of the contemporary world.

Conclusions

The institutional approach introduced in this article is understood as an effort to create and add a meaningful new dimension into scientific researches. Through appropriate organizational designs, the institutional mechanism may facilitate more organic exchanges and collaborations among researchers from traditional disciplines for advancements in their specializations. Meanwhile, the synergy and synthesis achieved via comfortably working together will in turn foster the emergence of new fields of studies or new kinds of sciences on the new dimension. This is essentially a system approach that aims to organically integrate holism and reductionism, and to harmonize generalization and specialization simultaneously in scientific pursuits.

Using the case of ESD@MIT in this article is not to suggest other institutions should follow MIT to create a similar organizational unit or discipline. Instead, it is to inspire the other universities, institutes, and general research organizations to design their specific multiple dimensions according to their unique situations and needs. The MIT case is biased toward engineering sciences. However, obviously this institutional approach is a general one applicable to any fields of sciences that seek to advance through the facilitation of similar mechanisms analyzed in this article.

However, creating an appropriate second dimension within an organization by adding a new operating unit is not easy. First, the second dimension, in particular, its intellectual agenda, must be clearly identified and designed according to the history, culture, mission, the existing organizational characteristics, and the nature of work of the organization. This requires a lot of cooperative and interdisciplinary pre-work.

Moreover, in practice, the creation of the second dimension may encounter huge resistance from the traditional and specialized researchers who might not be able to recognize and appreciate the value of doing so. The significance and necessity for such an institutional approach become obvious only if it is addressed to the major pressing challenges or the significant new problems of the world, which the traditional specialized and simple inter-disciplinary approaches are incapable to solve.

Bibliography

[1] Joel Moses. The Anatomy of Large Scale Systems. Working Paper Series ESD-WP-2003-01.25, Engineering Systems Division, MIT
[2] Website: http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/11
[3] Daniel Roos. Engineering Systems at MIT: The Development of the Engineering Systems Division. Engineering Systems Symposium, 2004
[4] Website: http://esd.mit.edu/
[5] Thomas P. Hughes. The Systems Approach: From Edison to MITRE. Paper presented to the MITRE Corporation, McLean, Virginia, 19 May, 2005.
[6] ESD Terms and Definitions (Version 12). http://esd.mit.edu/WPS/esd-wp-2002-01.pdf
[7] Joel Moses. Foundational Issues in Engineering Systems: a Framing Paper. Engineering Systems Symposium, 2004

Little Snowflake’s Wish

Lyrics & Melody: Jianxi Luo
Piano: Ling Leng

Did you ever notice a little snowflake,
it bloomed quietly on your shoulder.
That encounter was so short,
but it’s the meaning of the snowflake’s life.

Moment will not stay forever,
no need of promise, but memory.
Snowflake melt away on the road,
don’t cry, coz’ love ever happened.

If melting may exchange for spring,
snowflake would leave with a smile.
Spring comes, sun shines, everyone smiles –
this is just the little snowflake’s wish.

(Repeat last paragraph)

Confucius said: Studying without thinking makes you tired, while thinking without studying makes confused. He emphasized the importance of integrating reading and thinking. Another ancient Chinese philosopher said: read ten thousand books, and walk ten thousand miles. Here walking stands for getting experience. This sentence emphasized the important balance between reading and experiencing.

However, I think either of them tells a complete theory. I believe, the internal growth or maturation of a person comes from the emergent effects of integrating and interplaying three necessary activities: Read, Experience and Think. I call them Three Elements for Growth.

Confucius did not cover the importance of experience on reading and thinking, and the relevance of experience to improving reading and thinking. The latter neglected the importance of thinking. Neither of the two theorems is as extensive and complete as the Three Elements for Growth.

The growth or maturation I mentioned above is the unique growth or maturation that belongs to the individual person’s invisible inside, including intelligence, personality and capability, while excluding the growth and maturation of physical bodies. Such invisible inherent growth and maturation is the result of the interactions, fusions and emergences of the three elements: Reading, Experiencing and Thinking.

Here, reading means general acceptance and absorbing existing knowledge. It includes reading books, taking classes, communications with people, or observing the phenomena and movements in the outer world, etc. Experiencing means participating physically in events or activities. What is read may guide or influence the process of participating and doing things, meanwhile experience and reading can stimulate thinking. When you read, you often think in the trajectories of the knowledge flowing in the book. If in your thinking there are resonance and conflicts between your experience and what you read, the accumulative learning effect is much better than purely reading a dead book. In practice, if you can agilely use the knowledge obtained from reading and thinking, you may achieve more. In the mean time of reading and experiencing, thinking is important as it can determine what to read and what to experience. It is difficult to form unique personality and capability when you do things without thinking, or read books without thinking. Only if you integrate and fuse the three elements, you can achieve your unique personality, capability, intelligence, and charm inside, and other software embedded in the hardware of your body.

Three Elements for Growth: Read, Experience and Think. None of them can be absent.

[This article was first written in 2007]

Here I’d like to share a few mottos of mine. It actually had been a long time that motto-like words often jump out of my brain randomly. In the summer of 2008, I decided to start this journy of noting down such words when they came across. The list is expected to expand as my life moves on.

• Thinking feels like climbing. Climbing has a top, while thinking does not.
• Life is a trial; all the trials are to make a life.
• Reading is a journey, journey is to read.
• Between reality and dream there is no gap but hard work.
• Three activities to make a person grow: Do, Read, and Think. None of the three can be absent.
• Three “takes” of the criteria for a “man”: 1. Take responsibility; 2. Take pressure; 3. Take risk
• If life is a game of chess, the insurmountable adversary will be yourself.
• Giving up self is the last way to find self back.
• Do extraordinary things, but be an ordinary person.
• Since the world is something in our eyes, you can change the world by changing your eyes.
• When you look at yourself as a water drop, your mind becomes the ocean that contains enormous water drops.
• Being loved is fortunate, but being able to love is even more fortunate.
• Life is hardly perfect. Don’t expect a perfect life in the real world, but a perfect atman in heart.
• We don’t have to do everything, but we have to do what we have promised.
• Ideal persists where reality is not surpassed.
• Gaining should be motivated by the desire to give, while the activities to give should not be purposed for gaining.
• Don’t be sad about what you fail to achieve, but be happy about what you have achieved. Don’t give up at your failure, and also never stop at your success.
• I don’t know whether I can make it, but I know I can try it.
• Answering a question is actually to search a rational boundary that makes the question answerable.
• In a trouble, the inept complain, the weak bear, while the able change.

     (to be continued…)

The two symbols “=”, equal sign, and “=\=”, unequal sign, from mathematics, actually may represent broader senses than math, and can be used to understand broader problems. Here I use them to represent two fundamental subjective world views/perspectives, which have been used, consciously and unconsciously, by the human being to explore and understand the physical world. The equal sign represents the perspectives related to conservation or balance, while the unequal sign represent singularity or irreversibility.

On one hand, we always question and answer how things and matters are balanced, conserved, or encapsulated. On the other hand, we always seek to know how things and matters derivate and expand in time and space. The three major laws of Newtonian Mechanics and the First Law of Thermodynamics, all use a conservation perspective to explain the physical world. Meanwhile, from a completely different angle, the evolution-based theories from Darwin’s to the second law of thermodynamics have implemented the perspective of singularity and irreversibility in seeking the truth of happening.

Your eyesight determines the world in your eyes. The fact that the world is as what is known by us may not just be because they are truly like that, but because we have consciously or unconsciously applied such perspectives as conservation and evolution. They have not only assisted us to understand the physical world and life better, but may also affect the results of understanding in our brain. Or say, the way to recognize has influenced how the physical world is recognized.

Recognition may be driven by two human instincts — questioning and the desire to know the answer. It is our instinct that we cannot tolerate we don’t know. Everyone has the experience of desiring to know something. We may be obsessed by confusion, and then struggle to know the truth that underlies what confuses us. Once we have an answer that works for that while, we temporarily feel comfortable, happy, and our mind enters a certain kind of balanced and stable status. When a passenger car runs on a flat road that the driver is familiar about, the passengers will feel comfortable because driving is easily handled. When the car runs on a zigzag strange road, everyone on the car will feel uncomfortable because of the anxiety about the uncertainty ahead.

The efforts to find the answer to the questions and to solve the confusion are human instinct that pursues balance or conservation, or a process to get comfortably self-encapsulated. Answering a question is actually to search a rational boundary that makes the question answerable. Once we believe in an answer, in fact we have entered a self-closed recognized system. Inside the boundary, everything can be explained by something else in the same system. In that case, we won’t feel confused, and will feel happy and comfortable.

Although, human always apply the perspectives related to balance or conservation to solve our confusions, the action forms may be very different. For example, science seeks for rules or laws to explain the routines by which the world operates. Both the perspectives of conservation and evolution are efforts to seek rules or laws. However, religion seeks a “person” or a “conceptual person”. All the occurrences or existences in the world are managed and arranged by such persons, god, Buddha, etc. We don’t have to try and seek more, and we just need to be simply happy because everything can be explained by such a super “person”. Both scientific laws and God’s arrangements are actually applications of the conservational perspective. In particular, don’t forget, this results from our irreversible and endless effort to solve the confusions.

Continuously having questions and confusions, and then seeking for answers, is another type of human instinct. Such behaviors themselves are also singular and irreversible. Just because of this kind of human instinct, and related activities, our recognition on the external world is irreversibly expanding, and the human society evolves and advances irreversibly. At the same time, the pathway of the evolution of human being’s capability of recognition has also affected the pathway of the evolution of human beings ourselves.

Confusion-solving, or say, the search to expand the time and space we recognize, is an instinct of human-being, and an instinct to get happiness and satisfaction in surpassing what had been unknown, unanswerable, and made us unhappy. Applying the conservational perspective to close the system’s time and space of recognition is also human instinct, and an instinct to search the answer to the confusion and puzzle in order for happiness and ease.

The uses of the conservational and evolutionary world views, symbolized by the equal sign and unequal sign, are for the same purpose: pursuing satisfaction in the process of finding answers to our puzzle and confusions, and pursuing the ease from status in which the puzzles are explained. The two complementary philosophical world views of balance and singularity, not only help expand our recognition on the objective and physical world, but also help us recognize our subjective and spiritual world, and establish healthy life attitudes.

The Entropic Power of Energy and Natural Resources
A perspective that links energy and resources with economic growth, evolution, and the laws of the universe

Jianxi Luo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
January, 2007
luo@mit.edu

I view entropy is the inherent governing power of natural resources. The entire world of existence can be viewed as composed of an evolving subsystem and a non-evolving subsystem. The entire physical world is governed by the Entropy Law, while the local evolutionary subsystem is also governed by the Evolution Law. The entropic power of natural resources fuels evolution that creates value and increases order locally in the evolutionary subsystem, while leading to retrogression and disordering in the non-evolutionary subsystem. In the overall world, entropy is irreversibly increasing, and is evidenced as natural resource depletion, economic inflation, waste, and pollution. The purpose of this article is to provide a new view on the energy and resource challenges facing the human society, and suggest a solution based on this view — promoting a low-entropy living culture in which humans fuse with nature.

Traditional Power of Natural Resources

No human activity is independent of the use of natural resources, which are the nutrition of the world. Through economic processes, natural resources are extracted from the environment, and then transformed into consumables. In particular, our economy and life have been highly dependent on such non-renewable resources as petroleum and coal. Without them, economic activities and human life could not continue, and the world would be dead.

The possession of or access to natural resources often determines a country or region’s economic and political power in the world. OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is controversially influential in the world only because its member countries control the major portion of the world’s explored petroleum, the life blood of today’s global economy. Wars and conflicts are often due to natural resources. For instance, before World War II, the energy and natural resource supply could not catch up with the rising needs from the fast industrialization in the Axis countries, and this led to inflation, unemployment and societal turmoil, and then drove them to invade other countries to pillage natural resources.

Examples are countless. However, the power of natural resources has been widely underestimated. On one hand, we used to attribute economic growth more to technology, business models, and social regimes, than to natural resources. On the other hand, despite our awareness of the traditional influence of natural resources, such as the examples above, human society still widely ignores the more fundamental power of natural resources, which I call “entropic power” and is actually the governing power for the existence and growth of human society, nature, and the world.

Entropy

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says the differences in temperature, pressure, and density tends to even out over time in any isolated physical system. Entropy is defined as the measure of the irreversibility in such processes. Entropy can never be destroyed, but only be created. The total entropy of any isolated system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. Entropy is also a measure of order. The higher the entropy of a system, the higher the disorder it has. Here after, we will call the Second Law of Thermodynamics the “Entropy Law”.

The Entropy Law is universal to any process irrevocably moving from usefulness to uselessness, or from order to disorder — from low entropy to high entropy. Because of its ubiquitous nature, the Entropy Law finds wide applications as in such fields as information theory and economics.

In my view, the Entropy Law is not just a useful paradigm, but an inherent governing law of the holistic physical world of humans and nature. [To be careful, we should also be aware that the Entropy Law does not govern the transcendent spiritual world.]

Entropic Power of Natural Resources

- The Entropy Law Governs Economic Processes That Turn Natural Resources into Pollutants and Wastes in Environment

Traditional economics considers economic activities to take advantage of labor and capital to create value through production. However, the Entropy Law introduced to economics by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen made natural resources central. By definition, the Entropy Law also governs all the economic processes, moving them in one irreversible direction – changing natural resources from available to unavailable, from usable to unusable, or from low-entropy states (e.g., petroleum and uranium) to high-entropy states (e.g., CO2 and nuclear waste).

The irreversibility of economic processes has two aspects, in my view. First, such processes turn low-entropy natural resources into economically valuable products as well as high-entropy pollutants and wastes (Kummel, 1989). Products also become wastes at the end of their lives. Thus, non-renewable resources like petroleum and rare minerals are being permanently reduced. Meanwhile, pollutants and wastes are being irreversibly increased. For the example of nuclear waste, by far the human society still has no better disposal solution than storing it at geological repositories for long term isolation from the biosphere (MIT: The Future of Nuclear Power, 2003). Second, in the course of the extraction, distribution and transformation of natural resources, they, particularly energy, are consumed and dissipated, and pollutants and wastes are created.

The value of products must be created at the expense of greater disorder, pollution and waste [Faber, 1996]. Human society is increasingly experiencing such disorders as global warming and natural disasters. The warmer and warmer winters and the polar ice shelf breaks might be more or less evidence of global warming.

The overall effect of the extraction, transformation and use of natural resources is the absolute entropy increase of the world.

- Inflation as a Measure of the Entropy State of Natural Resources

Since all economic activities require natural resources, inflation can be considered an equivalent in economics to entropy in nature. Inflation is directly tied to the depletion of earth’s non-renewable resources. As the global GDP grows exponentially, non-renewable natural resources, like petroleum and rare metals, have become less and less exploitable, and cost more and more to explore, process, and consume. The costs of economic activities rise from the root of the natural resource flow line, and are passed along its each succeeding stage. Eventually, the end consumers pay the final bill for inflation. Furthermore, economic inflation also stimulates social and political disorders, like unemployment and war. Inflation indicates the entropy increase of the world.

Although economists also consider other factors, such as government monetary policies and wage increases, among the reasons for inflation, the depletion of natural resources is a more fundamental force. Although deflation and inflation alternate in the read world, the overall trend has been inflation, and it will continue, simply due to the entropic power of natural resources.

Evolution and Entropy Law

Since economic growth irreversibly increases entropy in the world, why are we still pursuing economic growth? My answer is Evolution. It is evolution that drives such activities of turning natural resources from low-entropy state into high-entropy state.

Human society has evolved from its origin to the current information era under the control of the general evolution algorithm, which is the same as that of biological systems. Value and order are created in the co-evolution of technologies, social institutions and businesses [Beinhocker, 2006]. We are always passionate about any evolutionary progress in these spaces. However, these advances also increase entropy simultaneously. For instance, the massive use of computers and internet has not only improved the efficiency of economic activities, but also accelerated the flow-through of natural resources. A typical Google search (involving multiple attempts) may generate 1g-10g of carbon dioxide [Leake and Woods, 2009]. In the case of a social technology, financial market, capital is more efficiently allocated to stimulate economic activities, and then accelerates the extraction and transformation of natural resources. The value from these advances is actually gained at the greater expense of accelerated natural resource depletion and environment deterioration (This is arguable when examining the benefit and cost in a local system).

With the economic evolution going on, more and more natural resources and energy are expended faster than ever in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, the military sector, and daily life. More heavily industrialized countries always consume more natural resources, and emit more pollutants and wastes. As Jeremy Rifkin said, “the Gross National Product is more accurately Gross National Cost” [Rifkin, 1980]. The public always views economic evolution, as well as all kinds of evolution including biological evolution, as a good thing because it advances life, increases order, and thus lowers entropy. However, it is only good in its local part. Meanwhile, the cost of evolution accumulates elsewhere. The living matter feeds on negative entropy (negentropy) from, and emits entropy to, the rest of the world that does not evolve (Schrödinger, 1945)

In my view, the physical world can be partitioned into two open subsystems: the evolutionary subsystem (e.g., life system), and the non-evolutionary subsystem (e.g., natural resources and environment). The evolutionary subsystem cannot evolve without sucking low-entropy natural resources from, and emitting high-entropy wastes to, the non-evolutionary subsystem. In the evolutionary subsystem, the Evolution Law controls the irreversible direction of evolution (decreasing entropy). In a larger context, evolution in its open subsystem is actually the driver of the irreversible entropy increase in the overall world, where the Entropy Law is the governing law.

Entropy Law, the Earth and the Universe

One might argue we do not need to worry because the Earth is an open system and the entropy of the Earth system may flow out. However, we should not restrict our observation and thinking within just the Earth. Along with economic and technological progress, human beings will expand farther into outer space. Actually, Clausius, Kelvin and other physicists discovered the Entropy Law by considering the larger context of the universe, assumed as an isolated system. It is commonly believed that the universe is not evolving, but retrogressing. In the far future, when entropy gradually reaches its maximum, no more free energy is available, nothing will take place, and then the universe will arrive at its dead end – heat death of the universe.

[a note on what “Universe” is? In Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the Universe is defined as the whole body of things observed or assumed. In Wikipedia, the Universe means the sum of all matter that exists and the space in which all events occur or could occur. It is assumed as an isolated system. In my view, I think the Universe is such a paradigm as God and Buddha, which were created by humans to close the gap of “the unknown” on our knowledge loop. We need them because we cannot afford that we cannot explain infinity. However, limits are set for “infinity” unconsciously.]

Even though there are debates on whether the universe is truly an isolated system, and we might not be able to live that long to see the end of the universe, we are now witnessing the entropy increases on our Earth in the forms of natural resource depletion, economic inflation, waste, pollution, and climate change. In a practical sense, whether the universe is exactly an isolated system is not the key issue. What we should care most about is the entropic power of natural resources, which fuels the evolution in the evolutionary subsystems, while leading to the retrogression in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the public remains unaware of this fundamental power, or say, unwilling to accept it.

Conclusions and Solutions

The world is governed by the Entropy Law. Entropy must increase globally. Every time we use any amount of non-renewable natural resources, first, there is less available for the future; second, greater disorder is created than the value derived. Meanwhile, the subsystem of human society is also governed by the Evolution Law. In particular, we are unable to stop evolution, which reduces entropy locally, while leading to the depletion of natural resources and the global increase of entropy.

One might feel desperate and hopeless. Please don’t. The Entropy Law is not a threat from which we should shrink, but a truth we should face. Only if we understand nature well, can we behave in accord with it. I am not interested in propagating a despairing or negativist attitude. Instead, I hope the public, especially the business and government leaders, are well aware of the entropic power of natural resources.

Blew is what I think we should do based on the new view on resources, and the world.

First, human society should be aware of the entropic power of natural resources. Only on this basis, can people achieve low-entropy attitudes and behaviors concerning natural resources, economy, and evolution at next steps.

Secondly, I want to carefully mention the recent world-wide enthusiasm for renewable natural resources, and the recycling of non-renewable natural resources. These processes also conform to the Entropy Law, so they might end up consuming even more non-renewable natural resources, and hastening their depletion. The same logic also applies to the efforts for so-called “green” technologies and “green” business models. I personally do not pin hopes on most of them. But, anyway, these efforts may be locally valuable sometimes, even though they are not ultimate solutions.

Finally, what is the ultimate solution? I think it is to change our culture/style/behaviors of life from a high-entropy one to a low-entropy one by education. Human society now is in a high-entropy culture, where the dominating purpose of life is to satisfy human wants by accelerating natural resources flow-through from available to unavailable. However, the proposed low-entropy culture regards humanity and nature as a holistic system. Natural resources are not only the resource of nature, but also the resource of our life. Since we cannot stop the evolution of our life system, let’s slow the global entropy increase by reducing the unnecessary cost of the evolution in a way not to waste any natural resources, and to give up our wasteful habits of living and working. Now that we are unable to stop or reverse the depletion of natural resources, let’s not waste any.

Life culture change is more crucial than any other means to achieve a more sustainable future of the world. However, to make this culture transition take place, we might need enormous and continuous endeavors from education systems, public institutions, governments, and international organizations.

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This article’s draft was first written in January, 2007, and modified several times later. The ideas in this blog article were stimulated by the readings below:

1. Beinhocker, Eric (2006). “The Origin of Wealth”. Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge, MA, United States.
2. Leake, Jonathan and Woods, Richard (2009). “Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches”. Times Online, http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece.
3. Faber, Malte, Manstetten, Reiner and Proops, John (1996). “Ecological Economics:Concepts and Methods”. Edward Elgar, UK.
4. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1971). “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process”. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, United States.
5. Kummel, Reiner (1989). “Energy as a Factor of Production and Entropy as a Pollution Indicator in Macroeconomc Modeling”. Ecological Economics, 1 (1989): 161-180.
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2003). “The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study”. Cambridge, MA, United States. http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
7. Rifkin, Jeremy (1980). “Entropy: A New World View”. The Viking Press, New York.
8. Schrödinger, Erwin (1945). “What is life? The Physical Aspect of The Living Cell”. Cambridge University Press, UK; Macmillan, New York.