This website seeks to provide the resources necessary to overcome some of the challenges associated with the extraordinary growth of scientific and philosophical knowledge in an important area of interdisciplinary research. According to Derek de Solla Price (1975), the father of scientometrics (i.e., the science of studying science), 90% of all the scientists that have ever lived are alive today. This statistic demonstrates the exponential growth in science that has taken place over the past few centuries. We can also see this exponential growth in the growth curve of human knowledge provided by Alfred Lotka, which is based on the number of scientific discoveries and inventions reported in the Handbook of the History of Natural Science and Technology.
Fig. 1 Lotka’s growth curve of human knowledge.
This exponential growth of scientific knowledge can be viewed as a part of the “Great Acceleration” described by Will Steffen, the director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute. He and his team of scientists and researchers uncovered a wealth of evidence which demonstrates that from 1750 to the present there has been a dramatic increase in primary energy use, as well as a whole host of other socio-economic and earth systems trends: in the growth of the world population, the gross domestic production, foreign direct investment, water use, transportation, telecommunication, international tourism, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ocean acidification, tropical forest loss, and terrestrial biosphere degradation (Steffen et al., 2015). The socio-economic trends are listed below (Fig. 2). Among them we could include the exponential growth of scientific knowledge. Steffen et al. refer to these trends collectively as the “Great Acceleration,” and they argue that it defines the trajectory of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems.
Fig. 2. Socio-economic trends (Steffen et al., 2015).
We have all reaped the benefits of this exponential growth in scientific knowledge. However, this growth has consequences. In 2023, the Dutch-born paleoecologist and evolutionary biologist Geerat J. Vermeij published a book entitled The Evolution of Power: A New Understanding of the History of Life that describes evolution as being guided by a version of the maximum power principle (2023). In this book, published by Princeton University Press, Vermeij does not mention anything about all of the work that the systems ecologist H. T. Odom did throughout his long career on the maximum power principle. In Odum’s second edition of his book, Environment, Power, and Society, published posthumously in 2007, he refers to the “maximum power principle” six times (2007, 32, 56, 59, 89, 91, 128) and “maximum power” 44 times. This forces us to reconsider the accuracy of the subtitle of Vermeij’s book.
Vermeij’s field, paleoecology, illustrates part of the problem. In academic disciplines, there has been an ever-increasing hyperspecialization. These days, people do not work in psychology; they work in group psychology, evolutionary psychology, sports psychology, social psychology, clinical psychology, forensic psychology, development psychology, counseling psychology, or environmental psychology, among many other subdisciplines. Consequently, it continues to get more and more difficult for psychologists to keep up with ongoing developments in psychology. This hyperspecialization is occurring in most academic disciplines.
In 2006, the scientists Leonid Martyushev and Vladimir Seleznev published a paper entitled “Maximum Entropy Production Principle in Physics, Chemistry and Biology” (Martyushev and Seleznev, 2006). They suggest the discussions of this principle have been fragmented and as a result, different research teams have been unaware of the studies performed by other scientists (Abstract). One of the main objectives of their paper is to overcome this fragmentation. We can see this “fragmentation” of our understanding of scientific knowledge as being an unfortunate byproduct of the exponential growth of scientific knowledge.
Since scientists are having a difficult time keeping up with the developments within their disciplines, it should be no surprise that researchers outside of science are also having a difficult time keeping up with the developments in different scientific disciplines. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche developed a concept that he called the will to power which described biotic and abiotic systems developing in ways that increase their power. During his life, his philosophy was largely ignored. After his death, his philosophy began to have a more substantial impact; however, philosophers considered the version of his concept of the will to power described above to be empirically implausible according to both the sciences in his own time and the contemporary sciences. This view is still maintained by most philosophers working in the secondary literature on Nietzsche today. None of the philosophers that have criticized Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power for being empirically implausible have mentioned any of the work done by Alfred Lotka, H. T. Odum, or Vermeij on the maximum power principle, or any of the work scientists have done on the maximum entropy production principle.
The systems ecologist Mark Brown, who did his graduate work with H. T. Odum, said in a recent interview he was conducting that our societal memory is not very good. One could argue that as the amount of research being done in different disciplines increases exponentially, our societal memory of it diminishes exponentially.
Many of the views held by scientists and researchers are based on assumptions about what is going on in their discipline and/or other disciplines and their ability to know exactly what is going on in their disciplines and others is decreasing over time. This fact threatens the integrity of the claims made in all the disciplines of intellectual inquiry. In a certain sense, the more we learn, the less we know. This is what I refer to as the growth of knowledge paradox.
The paradox I am referring to here is different from other paradoxes associated with knowledge. Some have suggested that the more we learn, the more we realize there is more that we do not know. For example, the more that we learn in cosmology, the more we learn that there are other regions of space – other galaxies and other universes – of which we know nothing. The paradox I am referring to is different: those affected by it are not aware of their ignorance, and this ignorance undermines the justification for the things they think they know. I am not aware of anyone who has described a version of the paradox similar to the one I am describing, but I am certainly not in a position to claim I am the only one who has described it. This is one of the things it is getting more difficult to know with any certainty.
This website and the book that I recently published (Maximum Power and its Philosophical Roots, Springer, 2025) make a focused attempt to overcome this paradox in one specific area of inquiry through an interdisciplinary investigation of the thermodynamic school of evolution and its philosophical implications. They both compile all of the research from different disciplines that relate to this investigation. This website attempts to take this a step further by enlisting others in the effort to share research information that is relevant to this investigation. In my research on Nietzsche and Odum, I found that they both take a systems approach to their work: they both attempt to synthesize information from several different disciplines and develop a useful view of the big picture. This website has the same objective.
References
Lotka, A. 1922. Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 8/6:147–151.
Martyushev, L.M., Seleznev, V.D. 2006. Maximum entropy production principle in physics, chemistry and biology. Physics Report 406/1: 1–45.
Odum, H. T. 2007. Environment, Power, and Society for the 21th Century. Columbia University Press.
Price, D. J. D. 1975. Science Since Babylon. Yale University Press.
Vermeij, G. J. 2023. The Evolution of Power: A New Understanding of the History of Life. Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford.