ENTROPY AND ENERGY ACCOUNTING: ARE THEY RELEVANT CONCEPTS? Julian L. Simon INTRODUCTION Concepts of physics are frequently misused by those who become intoxicated by casual acquaintance with them. After Einstein discovered the principle of special relativity, college sophomores and trendy preachers cited the principle as "proof" that "everything is relative". And after Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle, social scientists, humanists, and theologians seized on it to "prove" that certain kinds of human knowledge are impossible. The concept of entropy and the associated second law of thermodynamics have yet a longer history of abuse -- even by physicists, who should know better. As far back as 1910, America's greatest philosopher -- William James -- felt the need to disabuse America's greatest novelist -- his brother Henry -- of the idea that the Second Law had portentous social implications. The nonsensical ideas hitched onto the Second Law -- prominently, the concept of "energy accounting" -- are still with us, today perhaps more strongly than ever. Energy accounting has great intellectual charm, just as does Marx's labor theory of value to which it bears close resemblance. And persons (such as I) who assert that there is no known ultimate limit to population growth and human progress are said by energy accountants to err because of our supposed ignorance of these laws of physics. ENTROPY AND THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS The Second Law asserts that in a closed system the extent of random disorder of energy-charged particles must increase over time. The faster that the particles move, and the more energy that is used in movements and collisions, the faster the movement away from order and toward disorder. If, for example, you start with some pattern of molecules -- say, two gases at opposite ends of a box -- they will increasingly mix with each other and spread more uniformly throughout the box. The doomsayers extrapolate from this simple idea to the belief that the more fuel that humans use in current decades, the sooner our species must come to an end for lack of energy to maintain a patterned existence. (And let there be no doubt that they envision our eventual demise.) The concept of the Second Law underlies a vision of the human condition as inexorably sliding toward the worse in the long run. Ours is a closed universe, they assume, and within such a closed system entropy necessarily increases. Nothing can avail against this tendency toward decreasing order, increasing disorder, and a return to chaos -- to the formless and shapeless void described in the first words of Genesis. This vision is emphasized in the frequent appearance of the term "finite" in the literature of the environmental-cum- population-control movement. The vision is well set forth by the noted mathematician Norbert Weiner, who at least viewed the grim future with an attitude of Whitmanesque nobility rather than of panic. In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity. (1950, p. 58) This vision is embodied in the policy recommendations for our everyday political life offered by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971; 1979) with the approval of Paul Samuelson, and Herman Daly (1973; 1977), who urge that we should budget our energy and other resources with an eye to optimum allocation over the eons until the system runs down. The accompanying political agenda implies greater central planning and governmental control. It is not clear whether there is a direct link between an exogenous world view that requires more control (in turn, the result of being persuaded that the Second Law is the appropriate model for thinking about these matters) or whether doomsayers tend to be people who fear disorder and therefore concern themselves with constructing methods of controlling aspects of our social world so as to fight such disorder. Whichever is so, the same persons consistently invoke both sorts of ideas. All agree that the fearsome end is of the order of seven billion years or so from now. (Yes, you read right. And yes, so help me, they are serious.) The doomsayers say that we should be taking steps now to defer the supposed grim end. The concept of entropy is unquestionably valid and relevant for a closed container in the laboratory. It may also be relevant for any larger entity that can reasonably be considered a closed system. But it is quite unclear where the boundary should be drawn for discussion of the quantity of energy, or if there is any relevant boundary. It is clearly wrong to say that "As to the scarcity of matter in a closed system, such as the earth, the issue may, in my opinion, prove in the end more critical than that of energy" (Georgescu-Roegen, 1979, p. 99) because both energy (from the sun) and matter (from many planets) now enter into the earth's system. Perhaps the solar system will prove to be an isolated system for some period in the future -- conceivably for the entire life of the human species -- but that will be at least seven billion years. And it would seem that the chances are excellent that during that span of time humans will be in touch with other solar systems, or will find ways to convert the matter on other planets into the energy we need to continue longer. So with respect to energy there is no practical boundary surrounding any unit of interest to us. And without such a boundary, the notion of entropy in the large is entirely irrelevant to us. At the conceptual level of the universe -- and there is no reason to discuss any smaller entity in the present context of discussion -- it is quite unclear whether the concept of increasing entropy is relevant. Stephen Hawking, as eminent a student of these matters as there is in the world, has gone back and forth on his thinking on whether entropy would eventually increase or decrease (1988, p. 150). His judgment hangs on such matters as whether the universe is finite and/or bounded. His present view is that space-time is finite (p.135) but "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary" (p. 136). And he underlines the uncertainty of our knowledge by writing that "I'd like to emphasize that this idea that space and time should be finite without boundary is just a proposal (p. 136, his italics). And in any case, he concludes that the nature of our "subjective sense of the direction of time...makes the second law of thermodynamics almost trivial". These considerations, together with his assessment that "the total energy of the universe is zero" (p. 129) because of the balance of positive and negative energies, added to Hawking's portrayal of the state of thought in physics as thoroughly unsettled on all these cosmological questions (and which may stay unsettled forever because of the difficulty of knowing how many universes there are) would seem more than enough reason to make it ridiculous for us to concern ourselves with saving energy now to stave off for a few hundred years the possible winking out of civilization seven billion years from now. Though I have just been quoting Hawking in the service of my argument, I also wish to indicate an inconsistency in his thought which makes my argument even stronger. He insists firmly that "the real test [of science] is whether it makes predictions that agree with observation" (p. 137). But whereas the Second Law implies decreasing diversity, from the point of view of human beings, all our observations record an increase rather than a decrease in disorder, no matter what quantities we look at. The increase in complexity of living things throughout geological time, and of human society throughout history, are the most important examples, of course. Biologically -- as is suggested by the very word "evolution" -- the earth has changed from a smaller number of species of simple creatures toward a larger number of complex and ordered creatures. Geologically, the activities of human beings have resulted in a greater heaping up of particular materials in concentrated piles, e. g. the gold in Fort Knox and in gold jewelry compared to the gold in streams, or the steel in buildings and junk piles compared to the iron and other ores in the ground. The history of human institutions describes ever more complex modes of organization, a more extensive body of law, richer languages, a more ramified corpus of knowledge, and a greater range of human movement throughout the universe. All this suggests more order rather than less order with the passage of time. The finitists assert that this empirical evidence is irrelevant because it describes only a temporary "local" increase in order, superimposed on the long-term decrease that they say must be taking place. And the basis for their "must" is their assumption about the operation of the Second Law. But all the empirical evidence shows an increase in order. Hence Hawking's definition of science implies the conclusion that entropy will continue to decrease rather than increase as long as the laws of physics that are presently operative continue to hold. The situation resembles a couple of ants sitting on the jungle floor, hesitating to eat a leaf lest they hasten the disappearance of the forest. And if one of them says, "We're only two small ants, and the forest is so large," the other replies, "Yes, but what if all the ants thought that way?" The ants' actual knowledge of the life cycle of the forest may not be much inferior to humans' present knowledge of the life cycle of the set of universes that may exist (a set which may include only ours, of course). Here is how the cosmos seems to yet another distinguished physicist. Freeman Dyson, in his Gifford Lectures book, Infinite in All Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), said, "Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the consequent unboundedness of human destiny" (p. vii) The entropy conservers assume that others do not agree with them out of simple ignorance of physics and the Second Law, or because of willful and dishonest disregard of it. Any other possibility seems unimaginable to them. As Garrett Hardin wrote to me, " I am appalled at your omission, misunderstanding, or denial of the second law of thermodynamics, conservation laws, the idea of limits" (letter, November 17, 1981). And Paul Ehrlich writes, "One wonders if Simon could not at least find a junior high school science student to review his writings" (1981, and in Simon, 1990, p. 372). Perhaps the problem is that these biologists' scientific armamentarium is based on the physics that is taught in "junior high school" -- the state of the scientific art several decades ago, stripped of all subtlety and complexity. I urge recognition of other intellectual possibilities. The body of physical knowledge which the entropists rely upon is little more than a century old. And there is left to humanity a period 700,000,000 times that long to discover new principles before the sum runs out. As Hawking demonstrates, the cosmologists are in controversy even about whether the universe should be viewed as closed or as open and expanding, which would seem to imply lack of agreement about the validity of the sort of view of entropy held by those who would have us conserve energy to forestall the increase in entropy. Can it be sensible to proceed as if our present ideas will forever remain unchanged and unimproved? Here it might be wise for the entropists to keep in mind the famous blunder of the great British physicist Lord Kelvin (of the Kelvin temperature scale, and presumably the namesake of Kelvinator refrigerators), who asserted at the turn of the century that just about every major principle of physics worth discovering had already been discovered; all that was left was to refine the estimates of the constants. And at that time it would have been no more possible to "guarantee" that great new discoveries would be made than it is possible to make such guarantees today. But this does not mean that the probabilities of great discoveries for the next century (and for the next 70 million centuries) are less than they were for our century. The case of gravity is rather similar. Yes, with a bit of schooling one can predict the course of an object released within a closed airless container in the laboratory; this has been known for hundreds of years, and we can act safely on the basis of this knowledge. But understanding and predicting the fate of an object in space, or in a black hole, or elsewhere in the universe, still confounds the most learned physicists, and it would be foolish to make major policy decisions on the basis of such controversial assessments. (Those who view some body of knowledge as unquestionable might keep in mind the amusing and not-so-amusing switches in scientific views that have occurred historically. One only need mention theories of the shape of the earth, medical doctrine about leeching, belief that the elements are inviolate and that one metal cannot be transmuted into another, the incredulity at the microorganism theory of disease, and the shift within just a few years from dentists advising hard toothbrushes in an up-and- down motion to advising soft brushes in a horizontal motion -- the latter recommendation probably as little backed by experimental proof of efficacy as the former.) ENERGY ACCOUNTING Because of their concern with running out of energy, many doomsayers assert that we should make our economic decisions on the basis of "energy accounting" rather than on the basis of the theory of value determined by prices that is at the core of standard economics. According to the theory of energy accounting, the value of any good or service should be determined by the amount of energy that goes into making it. For example, a trip by bicycle should be valued more highly by society than the same trip by auto because less energy is expended in powering the bicycle. And any energy-supplying process that uses more raw energy than it produces is judged to be perverse, and should be avoided. For example, a farming operation that puts in more energy by way of tractor operations than the energy in the food supplies put out to human consumers is ipso facto a waste. These analyses exclude any other values. The difference in time the traveler expends in going by car rather than by bicycle is assumed irrelevant. And the fact that the food keeps us alive, and with enjoyment, whereas the diesel fuel that powers the tractor cannot provide those benefits, is omitted from the calculation. If society were to follow an energy-economizing rule, we could not have modern life, of course. Less energy comes out of an electricity-producing operation in the form of electricity than goes in as coal or nuclear fuel. But in the form of power for our appliances, the electricity is more valuable to us than is the coal or uranium. The prices we are willing to pay for goods and services express our values for these goods and services; we pay more for a unit of energy as electricity than as a lump of coal. It is this price system that directs economic activity. And it is this price system that enthusiasts wish to replace with energy accounting. An analogy may help explain the intellectual issues at the root of the discussion. Imagine yourself in a lifeboat marooned at sea after a tropical shipwreck. The supply of water is frighteningly low. Because water is so valuable, you and the other passengers decide to ration the water, allocating a cupful to each person each day. And each of you is likely to drink your ration of water yourself rather than trading it even if another passenger offers to swap you an expensive wristwatch or necklace, because you figure that the watch or jewelry is worthless if you die of thirst. This is the logic of conserving energy irrespective of other values. Now notice how different is the value of a given amount of water on the lifeboat and ashore. It makes sense to swap a cup of water for a watch where there is plenty of water, and hence the relative values -- expressed in trading prices -- are different ashore and on the lifeboat. But the energy accountants do not recognize that trading prices as set by the market embody the sensible bases for exchange. Aboard a lifeboat, if the water is at the other end of the boat, you will need to sweat a bit to move to get the water to drink, and the sweat moisture will be borne off you into the air and "lost" to the lifeboat -- just as the process of cultivating food mechanically may "lose" energy. But if you don't move to the other end of the lifeboat to get the water, you will die, so it obviously makes sense to do so even though that operation reduces the amount of water in the lifeboat. By the same token, urinating overboard is a loss. But you cannot live without urinating. In exactly the same way, it makes sense for us to spend more energy in producing electricity than is embodied in the electricity we use. If we were suddenly to find ourselves in a situation in which the supply of energy were much more limited than it really is -- say, a year's availability instead of the seven billion years' supply (an absolute minimum) -- it would make sense for us to value energy and other goods and services differently than we now do, and the market would reflect this difference. (When countries are poor, they plow with animals rather than machines.) But to enforce an energy-based theory of value in our present circumstances is simply to doom ourselves to ridiculously-impoverished lives. (Anyone who disagrees with this and believes in energy accounting ought to invest in supplies of coal and oil.) Marx's labor theory of value is cut from the same cloth. Marx would have us value each good and service by the number of minutes of human time involved in its production, irrespective of whether the time is that of a surgeon or a janitor, a leading soprano or a stagehand, the president of IBM or a shipping clerk. The basis for this valuation scheme is primarily moral rather than economic, however, because the purported scarcity of human life or time is not the issue for Marx, unlike the argument for energy accounting. Curiously, the leading proponents of energy accounting also assert a moral-theological basis for the use of such a scheme, not dissimilar from the Marxian valuation system. Herman Daly founds his belief in reducing energy use and his opposition to economic growth on an "Ultimate End" which "presupposes a respect for and continuation of creation and the evolutionary process through which God has bestowed upon us the gift of self-conscious life". From this he deduces that "The apparent purpose of growth economics is to seek to satisfy infinite wants by means of infinite production. This is about as wise as chasing a white whale, and the high rationality of the means employed cannot be used to justify the insanity of purpose" (1979, p. 77). That is, the call for energy conservation is involved with the moral belief that we live better lives if we live more simply and use less energy. REFERENCES Barnett, Harold and Chandler Morse,Scarcity and Growth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963). Campbell, Jeremy, Grammatical Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Campbell, Jeremy, Grammatical Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983). Daly, Herman E. (ed.), Toward a Steady-State Economy (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1973). Daly, Herman E., Steady-State Economics, (San Francisco: Freeman, 1977). Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Harvard University Press, 1971). _____, "Comments on the Papers by Daly and Stiglitz," in V. Kevin Smith (ed.) Scarcity and Growth Revisited (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1979), pp. 95-105. Hawking, Stephen W., A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988). Simon, Julian L. , The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: PUP, 1981) Wiener, Norbert, The Human Use Of Human Beings (New York: Avon Books, 1950) p. 58. page 1/article0 entropy/January 15, 1991