CHAPTER FOUR: TABLE OF CONTENTSEntropy and Finiteness: The 
Irrelevant Dismal Theory
Conclusio

CHAPTER FOUR
THE GRAND THEORY
   The first three chapters offer a mind-boggling vision of 
resources: the more we use, the better off we become - and 
there's no practical limit to improving our lot forever.  Indeed, 
throughout history, new tools and new knowledge have made 
resources easier and easier to obtain.  Our growing ability to 
create new resources has more than made up for temporary setbacks 
due to local resource exhaustion, pollution, population growth, 
and so on.  Is there some fundamental reason why this should be 
so?
   After I investigated case after case of phenomena which the 
doomsters said were getting worse because of increasing scarcity 
and population growth, and found instead that they were getting 
better - as you will see in the chapters to come - it came to 
seem no accident.  I even began to be rather sure in advance that 
I would find improvement rather than deterioration, and though I 
knew I had to check out each case, I began to worry that I might 
fall into error by assuming that a mere coincidence is a general 
rule.  So I began to wonder whether there is a deep connection, a 
general theory that embraces all these phenomena.  And I believe 
that there is.
   Let us begin by going beyond the trends in particular 
resources.  The greatest and most important trend, of which these 
particular trends are a part, is the trend of this earth becoming 
ever more livable for human beings.  We see the signs of this in 
our longer life expectancy, improved knowledge of nature, and 
greater ability to protect ourselves from the elements, living 
with ever more safety and comfort.  
   But though this larger trend buttresses the particular 
resource trends, it still provides no causal explanation of the 
phenomenon we seek to understand.  Evolutionary thinking, 
however, and (more specifically in economics) the sort of 
analysis suggested by Friedrich Hayek, offers an explanation of 
the observed long-term trend. Hayek (following upon Hume) urges 
upon us that humankind has evolved sets of rules and patterns of 
living which are consistent with survival and growth rather than 
with decline and extinction, an aspect of the evolutionary 
selection for survival among past societies. He assumes that the 
particular rules and living patterns have had something to do 
with chances for survival--for example, he reasons that patterns 
leading to higher fertility and more healthful and productive 
living have led to groups' natural increase and hence survival--
and therefore the patterns we have inherited constitute a 
machinery for continued survival and growth where conditions are 
not too different from the past. (This is consistent with a 
biological view of humankind as having evolved genes that point 
toward survival. But no such genetic evolution is presupposed by 
Hayek, in part because its time span is too great for us to 
understand it as well as we can understand the evolution of 
cultural rules.  It may be illuminating, however, to view 
mankind's biological nature as part of the long evolutionary 
chain dating from the simplest plants and animals, a history of 
increasing complexity of construction and greater capacity to 
deal actively with the environment.)                                
      Let us apply Hayek's general analysis to natural resources.  
Such resources of all sorts have been a part of human history 
ever since the beginning.  If humankind had not evolved patterns 
of behavior that increased rather than decreased the amounts of 
resources available to us, we would not still be here.  If, as 
our numbers increased (or even as our numbers remained nearly 
stationary), our patterns had led to diminished supplies of 
plants and animals, less flint for tools, and disappearing wood 
for fires and construction, I would not be here to be writing 
these pages, and you would not be here to be reading them.
    What are the key patterns that maintained us and increased 
our numbers?  Certainly the evolved cultural patterns include 
voluntary exchange between individuals, and the market that 
humankind has evolved to provide resources in increasing 
quantities; institutions, such as schools that pass on knowledge; 
libraries and legends and storytellers that store knowledge; and 
monasteries and laboratories and R&D departments that produce 
knowledge.  The evolved biological patterns include the hunger 
signals we get when we lack food, and the attention that we focus 
on apparent regularities in nature, such as the annual cycle of 
seasons, when they appear before us.  But ignorance of these 
cultural and biological patterns is not devastating for us, and 
such ignorance ought not to be surprising, given the complexity 
of these patterns and the difficulty of any one person seeing 
much of any pattern. Belief that our evolved history is, as I 
suggest, toward being creators rather than destroyers may be 
strengthened by some evidence that such evolution spontaneously 
occurs independently within most human groups, as a result of the 
conditions of natural life that humankind faces.  People build 
shelters from sun, rain, and snow.  The exchange mechanism 
evolves everywhere as a way of handling differences in abilities 
among persons, in order to improve our capacities to construct 
and create new goods as well as to distribute existing goods.  
Chiefs of work gangs somehow assume their roles to enable 
constructive tasks to be carried out efficiently.  Communities 
reward creators of community projects in a variety of ways that 
they do not reward destroyers of community resources.  (Warriors 
against other groups are not exceptions to this proposition.  But 
perhaps it deserves mention as an exception that songs are 
written about such destroyers as the James Gang as well as about 
such creators as John Henry).  Mothers probably everywhere ooh 
and ah about their children's sand castles, and reprimand the 
children when they kick over other children's sand castles.  And 
though I have no evidence and feel no need to consult 
anthropologists on the matter, I'd bet that early tribes gave 
greater honor to persons in dry climates who tended to find water 
than to those who polluted water sources, and greater honor to 
those who tended to find food effectively than to those who 
showed considerable ability to consume food supplies.    
   Our whole evolution up to this point shows that human groups 
spontaneously evolve patterns of behavior, as well as patterns of 
training people for that behavior, which tend on balance to lead 
people to create rather than destroy.  Humans are, on net 
balance, builders rather than destroyers.  The evidence is clear:  
the civilization which our ancestors have bequeathed to us 
contains more created works than the civilization they were 
bequeathed.    
   In short, humankind has evolved into creators and problem-
solvers.  Our constructive behavior has counted for more than our 
using-up and destructive behavior, as seen in our increasing 
length of life and richness of consumption. 
   This view of the average human as builder conflicts with the 
view of the average human as destroyer which underlies the 
thought of many doomsdayers. From the latter view derive such 
statements as "The U.S. has 5 percent of the population, and uses 
40 percent of resources," without reference to the creation of 
resources by the same U.S. population.  (Also involved here is a 
view of resources as physical quantities waiting for the 
plucking, rather than as the services that humankind derives from 
some combination of knowledge with physical conditions.) If one 
notices only the using-up and destructive activities of 
humankind, without understanding that constructive patterns of 
behavior must have been the dominant part of our individual-cum-
social nature in order for us to have survived to this point, 
then it is not surprising that one would arrive at the conclusion 
that resources will grow scarcer in the future.    
   Paradoxically, rules and customs that lead to population 
growth rather than to population stability or decline may be part 
of our inherited capacity to deal successfully with resource 
problems in the long run, though the added people may exacerbate 
the problems in the short run.  Such rules and customs probably 
lead to long-run success of a society in two ways. First, high 
fertility leads to increased chances of survival of the group, 
ceteris paribus;  the Parsis in India seem doomed to disappear in 
the long run due to restrictive marriage and fertility patterns, 
though individually they have been very successful economically.  
Second, high fertility leads to resource problems which then lead 
to solutions to the problems which usually leave humanity better 
off in the long run than if the problems had never arisen.  
Third, in a more direct chain of events, rules and customs 
leading to high fertility fit together with the positive effect 
of additional people on productivity, both through the demand for 
goods and through the supply of ingenious minds, that I discuss 
at length in recent books.     
   However, even if one accepts that humankind has evolved into a 
creator rather than a destroyer, it is certainly not unreasonable 
to wonder whether there have been changes in conditions, or one 
or more "structural changes" in patterns of social behavior, that 
might point to a change in the positive trend, just as there 
might have been environmental changes in the case of the 
dinosaurs or structural changes among some human groups that have 
disappeared.    
   Change in natural conditions sometimes has affected cultural 
evolution.  But possible "internal contradictions" in a society 
or economy are more relevant to the present context.  This 
concept represents the intuitive notion that, because of our 
population size and growth rate, and because of the way we 
produce goods and are organized socially, our civilization is 
unwieldy, and hence must collapse of its own weight--by, for 
example, nuclear destruction, or the failure of a single all-
important crop.    
   Many who are pessimistic about the outcome of the present 
course of civilization suggest that the externalities of 
pollution are such an "internal contradiction" that will do us 
in.  Some political organizations and devices have evolved to 
deal with the matter, and we have both public and private cleanup 
and collection of various kinds of garbage, as well as laws that 
regulate pollution behavior.  But the possible changes in 
pollutions, and the recency of the onset of regulatory 
activities, certainly leave room to wonder whether we have yet 
evolved reliable patterns of dealing with pollution problems.
   Intergenerational relationships with respect to resources are 
another frequently-mentioned possible "internal contradiction," 
that is, one generation exploiting a resource and leaving too 
little for the next generation. Futures markets, both those that 
buy and sell the resources themselves and those that sell and buy 
the shares of resource-supplying firms, have evolved to protect 
against this potential danger.  And we have had a long enough 
history by now to be confident that this evolved mechanism is 
reliable and satisfactory for the purpose.    
   In conclusion, I am suggesting that humankind has evolved 
culturally (and perhaps also genetically) in such a manner that 
our patterns of behavior (with social rules and customs being a 
crucial part of these patterns) predispose us to deal 
successfully with resource scarcity.  This view of human history 
is consistent with the observed long-term trend toward greater 
resource availability, and with the positive (and growing) 
preponderance of our creative over our exploitational activities.  
This view provides a causal foundation for the observed benign 
resource trends. It argues against our being at a turning point 
in resource history now, and thereby buttresses the technique of 
simply extrapolating from past trends that produces forecasts of 
increasing rather than decreasing resource availability.  That 
is, our evolved patterns have given us greater rather than less 
command over resources over the centuries.  The market system is 
part of that evolution, of course. But it is not the whole of it.  
The story of Robinson Crusoe (which has been badly twisted by 
economists, who make it a story of allocation when it is really a 
story of ingenuity and the use of the knowledge that he brought 
with him) also illustrates this point, e.g., that by this time we 
have developed a body of knowledge and a set of patterns which 
allow us to improve our resource situation rather than make it 
worse, even as we use resources and even in the absence of an 
exchange mechanism. 
   Thus, I think we can with confidence expect to observe greater 
rather than less availability of resources with the passage of 
time, whether it be arable land or oil or whatever, just as we 
observe in the trends in the past. If I am correct, we now have 
systematic grounds to believe that we are not at a turning point 
in resource history caused by man's propensity to destroy rather 
than create.  Rather, humankind is on balance creator rather than 
destroyer. 
   Here we return to Figure 1-2, and ask how Earl Cook went wrong 
with respect to forecasting the price of mercury.  Cook did 
exactly what I recommend - he looked at the longest possible data 
series.  But that did not save him from error.  In contrast, why 
did my predictions for metals prices succeed?  Part of the 
explanation is that he paid attention to a short-run reversal in 
the trend.  But in addition to the data, it can help to bear a 
general vision - a theory, if you like. My general vision is 
stated just above - that on balance we create more than we use.  
Cook's general vision is Malthusian, that resources are finite 
and eventually must run out - the same vision that inspired 
Limits to Growth.  The very different success records of Cook's 
and Limits to Growth's and my own forecasts provide some basis 
for judging which general vision is more helpful.
  
      ENTROPY AND FINITENESS: THE IRRELEVANT DISMAL THEORY
   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 a long history of abuse -- even by 
physicists, who should know better.  Nonsensical ideas hitched 
onto the Second Law -- including the concept of "energy 
accounting", which is discussed in the afternote to chapter 12 -- 
are still with us, today perhaps more strongly than ever.  The 
cover of a paperback named Entropy says "Entropy is the supreme 
law of nature and governs everything we do.  Entropy tells us why 
our existing world is crumbling..."  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.  
   The Second Law of Thermodynamics asserts that in a closed 
system (please note those crucial two words) the 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 doomsters 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 an 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 set forth well by the 
noted mathematician Norbert Weiner, who at least viewed the grim 
future with an attitude of Whitmanesque nobility rather than of 
panic.  

     [W]e 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.

   This vision is embodied in the policy recommendations for our everyday political 
life offered by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen with the approval of Paul Samuelson, and of 
Herman Daly, 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 a desire to impose more control leads people to 
believe that the Second Law is the appropriate model for human activity or whether 
doomsters tend to be people who fear disorder in the first place 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.  
     The common estimated date of the fearsome end of our cosmos is seven billion 
years or so from now. The doomsters say that we should therefore be taking steps right 
now to defer the supposed grim end. (Yes, you read right.  And yes, so help me, they 
are serious.)
   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 discussions 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";  the earth is not a closed system because both energy (from the sun) and 
matter (cosmic dust, asteroids, debris from many planets) constantly rain down on the 
earth.  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 even then it 
will last perhaps seven billion years.  And the chances would seem 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 in his thinking on 
whether entropy would eventually increase or decrease.  His judgment hangs on such 
matters as whether the universe is finite and/or bounded.  His present view is that 
space-time is finite but the "boundary condition of the universe is that it has no 
boundary".  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.   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". 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. 
   Roger Penrose, another eminent English physicist, says,  "We do not know whether 
the universe as a whole is finite or infinite in extent - either in space or in time - 
though such uncertainties would appear to have no bearing whatsoever on physics at the 
human scale."  Other physicists argue in journals about whether it is possible for 
life to continue forever.  
   These comments by Hawking and Penrose should be sobering to the many persons who 
would like government to regulate our daily behavior on the basis of what they believe 
are the laws of physics.  The frequent assertion that of course our resources are 
finite is quite inconsistent with the fact that present scientific knowledge of our 
physical world is extraordinarily incomplete (and probably always must be).  One must 
wear very tight blinders not to be humbled by reading such accounts in the press as 
that recent discoveries in astronomy "have punctured almost flat the leading theories 
on how the first stars and galaxies were born." According to Stephen Maran, a 
spokesman for the American Astronomical Society, "The field is in disarray.  All the 
leading theories are wrong."  Yet an economist and a theologian  are sure enough of 
their understanding of the universe that they advise the government to pressure us to 
ride bicycles now to budget energy for the next seven billion or so years?  Boggles 
the mind.
   Though I earlier quoted 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."   But whereas the Second Law implies decreasing order, from 
the point of view of human beings all our observations record a long-term 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 in the human environment with the passage of time, and 
hence contradicts theories of increasing entropy. 
   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 again, all the empirical 
evidence shows an increase in order - which is consistent with the idea that Earth is 
not a closed system.  Hence Hawking's definition of science implies the conclusion 
that entropy will continue to decrease rather than increase in the human environment - 
Earth and any other planets we may choose to inhabit - 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 by doing so they hasten the disappearance of the forest.  One of them 
says, "We're only two small ants, and the forest is so large," but the other replies, 
"Yes, but what if all the ants thought that way?" and carries the day. Indeed, 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).  Perhaps these ants would make a good 
Gary Larson cartoon along the lines of his cartoon on page 000.  
   The entropy conservers assume that others do not agree with them either due to 
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."  And Paul 
Ehrlich writes, "One wonders if Simon could not at least find a junior high school 
science student to review his writings."   Perhaps the problem is that these 
biologists' own 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.  
   The concept of entropy simply doesn't matter for human well-being.  Our earthly 
island of order can grow indefinitely within the universal sea of chaos. Life could 
even spread from Earth to other planets, other galaxies, etc., incorporating an 
increasing portion of the universe's matter and energy.  What happens at the end of 
time is anybody's guess: the universe may or may not be bounded.  Who cares?  That's 
well beyond the lifetime of our sun.  Logically, we should worry much more about the 
death of our own sun than the supposed limits imposed by entropy and the "laws" of 
physics.  
   I urge recognition of other intellectual possibilities.  Even if the Second Law is 
correct - it's only a century or so old - there is left to humanity a period perhaps 
50,000,000 times that long to discover new principles before the sun runs out.  But as 
Hawking demonstrates, 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 entropy viewpoint held by those who would have us 
conserve energy to forestall the universe's doom.  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 measurements of the constants.  At 
that time, just as now, it would not have been possible to "guarantee" that great new 
discoveries would be made. But the spectacular discoveries of the past century do not 
mean that there are fewer great discoveries in store for the next century (or for the 
next seventy million centuries). Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: 
the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.
   The case of gravity is similar to entropy here.  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 predicting the trajectory of, say, three objects in 
space, or the fate of anything in a black hole, 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 unshakeable might keep in mind the 
amusing and not-so-amusing switches in scientific views that have occurred 
historically.  A few examples: 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, derision heaped on 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.  
   Indeed, a casual reading of lay science magazines shows that physicists are 
manufacturing new and competing theories of the cosmos at a very rapid rate.  Just a 
few stray snippets: "For more than a decade now, the nascent field of particle 
astrophysics has grown like a garden gone wild."  Or "Astronomers Go Up Against the 
Great Wall:  The discovery of this huge structure could undermine `cold dark matter' 
theory of galaxy formation; but what is the alternative?"  And physicist David Layzer 
"argues that there is an indeterminacy set down in the order of things.  He formulates 
what he calls the `strong cosmological principle' against starker interpretations of 
the second law, arguing that even at the origin of the universe indeterminacy played 
an essential role...Evolution becomes then an open rather than a closed system, 
offering always the possibility of freedom and surprise.  Layzer's conclusion is 
optimistic: `The new scientific worldview...assures us that there are no limits to 
what we and our descendants can hope to achieve and to become.'"  

CONCLUSION
   Evolution, not entropy, is the appropriate theory for human development.  The 
following chapters in Part I look at particular resources, documenting case after case 
of the general rule.
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