Originally published on The Strategic Culture Foundation In part three of this series, we were introduced to the growth of modern liberalism and Malthusianism as the outgrowth of the core fundamental axioms contained in Newton and Locke’s philosophical descriptive systems of mankind and the universe. We explored some of the leading voices who resisted this liberal Malthusian paradigm of social engineering with particular attention paid to the figure of Abraham Lincoln’s trusted advisor Henry C. Carey. We ended that section by discussing a new innovative adaptation which Malthusianism and Newtonian mechanics took in the late 19th century under the label of “Entropy”- also known as “the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics”. This system was popularized by a mathematician named Rudolph Clausius and based itself on a sleight of hand that took the obvious properties of heat powered machines made by humans which necessarily tended towards heat death over time, and extended these properties to the entire universe. The outgrowth of the social application of this dismal theory of a dying universe took the form of a neo-Malthusianism called eugenics.
Matt, I would love to hear you and Tom Luongo revisit the Entropy subject. It got brushed aside in your last podcast with him. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is certainly valid. It’s real. But its validity presupposes the system is closed and no external energy can enter the system. It also presupposes that time is linear. This is how Russell saw the universe, as you’ve explained.
I don’t know if time is truly linear. Or if it is cyclical. Or if it is a series of nested cycles. Or if it is a cycle moving along a linear trajectory like a bicycle wheel across the pavement.
But what I do know is that Spring follows Winter roughly every 12 months. And the decay and the randomness characteristic of Winter is replaced with new life. Molecules come together by some unseen forces and they organise into new green shoots in my garden and ducklings in my backyard pond. This happens every year and it sufficiently proves to me entropy does reverse for a period. And since this is true (at least in my eyes), it is true that the system is not closed. There is an outside energy expressing itself in the rebirth. I would call it God. Others might call it Mother Nature. Either way, it’s an unseen force reversing periodic entropy.
Coming back to the Malthusians, they decline to view human beings as created in the image of God. They refuse our creative intellect. That creative intellect is something akin to energy being piped into this universe, through us. And it is what allows us to reverse entropy. But we must ever strive to keep the entropy at bay by exercising and fulfilling the potential of that image of God bestowed unto each and every one of us.
If we accept and embody the Malthusian label of ‘talking cow’ slapped on our foreheads... then yes... entropy is inescapable.
A brilliant and insightful analysis, as were the previous ones in the series ....explains so much of where we are now and how we got here!
Matt, I would love to hear you and Tom Luongo revisit the Entropy subject. It got brushed aside in your last podcast with him. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is certainly valid. It’s real. But its validity presupposes the system is closed and no external energy can enter the system. It also presupposes that time is linear. This is how Russell saw the universe, as you’ve explained.
I don’t know if time is truly linear. Or if it is cyclical. Or if it is a series of nested cycles. Or if it is a cycle moving along a linear trajectory like a bicycle wheel across the pavement.
But what I do know is that Spring follows Winter roughly every 12 months. And the decay and the randomness characteristic of Winter is replaced with new life. Molecules come together by some unseen forces and they organise into new green shoots in my garden and ducklings in my backyard pond. This happens every year and it sufficiently proves to me entropy does reverse for a period. And since this is true (at least in my eyes), it is true that the system is not closed. There is an outside energy expressing itself in the rebirth. I would call it God. Others might call it Mother Nature. Either way, it’s an unseen force reversing periodic entropy.
Coming back to the Malthusians, they decline to view human beings as created in the image of God. They refuse our creative intellect. That creative intellect is something akin to energy being piped into this universe, through us. And it is what allows us to reverse entropy. But we must ever strive to keep the entropy at bay by exercising and fulfilling the potential of that image of God bestowed unto each and every one of us.
If we accept and embody the Malthusian label of ‘talking cow’ slapped on our foreheads... then yes... entropy is inescapable.