Maximum Power and its Philosophical Roots
The Critical Importance Today of the Ideas of Howard Odum and Friedrich Nietzsche
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Beschreibung
This Briefs volume focuses on the maximum power principle, which was created by the mathematician and physical chemist Alfred Lotka, and further developed and utilized most prominently by the systems ecologist H. T. Odum, who applied it to different physical, biological, ecological and economic systems. They both described this principle providing a thermodynamic framework for evolutionary theory. This principle has a philosophical heritage that has, until now, gone unrecognized. The 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche viewed his concept of the will to power as an empirical principle that describes how organic and inorganic systems develop in ways that grow in power. This book describes this interdisciplinary story: it discusses the development of both principles, reviews the empirical and theoretical support for them, critically examines their alleged limitations, and describes their philosophical implications, evidenced in a particularly provocative manner by Nietzsche's and Odum's critiques of moral and religious values.
First book on the extraordinary parallels between the work of the ecologist H. T. Odum and the philosopher F. Nietzsche Demonstrates that Nietzsche's concept of will to power is supported by scientific work in the 20th and 21st centuries Illustrates the philosophical implications of the maximum power principle and the maximum entropy production principle
Autor*in
Timothy McWhirter
Themen in »Maximum Power and its Philosophical Roots«
Maximum Power Principle Will to Power H. T. Odum Nietzsche's Metaethical Epistemology Law of Evolution Energy Systems Language Energy Metaphors