The Science and Philosophy of the "Thermodynamic School" of Evolution
This paper was written by Charles A. S. Hall and Timothy McWhirter and published in 2023. It provides a review of the development and use of the maximum power principle in evolutionary theory, ecology, and economics. It includes a discussion of how Alfred Lotka and H. T. Odum both described the maximum power principle applying…
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This book was written by Timothy McWhirter and published in 2025. It examines the relation between the maximum power principle developed by Alfred Lotka and H. T. Odum and the concept of the will to power developed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It discusses the work of the scientists and philosophers that influenced the…
This paper was written by Linjun Li, Hongfang Lu, David R. Tilley, Hai Ren, and Weijun Shen and published in 2012. It is based on a project intended to test the validity of the maximum empower principle in the self-organization of forest ecosystems by applying an ecosystem model to simulate the dynamics of three forest plantations in south China during 1985-2007. The abstract states:…
This article was written by Iris Fry and published in 1995. She further developed these ideas in a book, Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview, which was published in 2000. In the paper, she argues that what she calls the “thermodynamic school” of evolution provides a “law-governed” view of the “continuous…
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Henry Adams (1838-1918) was a historian and a member of the Adams family, which produced two presidents of the United States, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. He appears to be the first professional historian to correlate historical periods in terms of the use of energy, and his work led him to outline a new…
This book was written by Thomas Nagel and published in 2012. He argues that the contemporary approach to evolutionary theory, which characterizes it as a random process, is unable to account for the existence of the mind and consciousness, and is therefore incomplete. Nagel’s argument (which is controversial) is that we need to use different…
This paper was written by Elijah Thimsen and published in 2024. It is based on research he did on data from the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments in order to determine how the rate of sunlight absorbed by the earth and the rate of global entropy production have evolved…
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This paper was written by Will Steffen (pictured), Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Michele Deutsch, Owen Gaffney, and Cornelia Ludwig and was published in 2015. Steffen was the executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute. The abstract of paper states: “The ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs, originally published in 2004 to show socio-economic and Earth System…
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This book was written by Earl Cook and published in 1976. Below is a partial, chronological list of the advancements in the power output of heat engine technology provided by Cook (1976, p. 29). This list illustrates that the power of these engines has continued to go up over time and there are non-linear increases…
This paper was written by Timothy M. Lenton (pictured), Peter-Paul Pichler, and Helga Weiz and published in 2016. The abstract states: “Major revolutions in energy capture have occurred in both Earth and human history, with each transition resulting in higher energy input, altered material cycles and major consequences for the internal organization of the respective…
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