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 Paul Katsafanas and published in 2011. In this paper, Katsafanas develops a unique interpretation of Nietzsche’s metaethical position based on a version of constitutivism: the view that we can derive substantive normative conclusions from an account of the nature of agency. The abstract states: “This paper has two goals. First,…
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This book was written by Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick and published in 2012. The authors provide a comprehensive interpretation of Nietzsche’s book Beyond Good and Evil. In this book, Nietzsche provides his famous argument for the concept of the will to power, the version that applies to biotic and abiotic systems. Clark has argued…
This paper was written by Brian Leiter and published in 2013. In this paper, Leiter provides a very interesting and valuable interpretation of many aspects of Nietzsche’s naturalism. However, given the focus of the investigation on this website, one aspect of this paper does stand out: Leiter’s view of what he calls “the metaphysics of…
This paper was written by Brian Leiter and published in 2000. Leiter argues that philosophers that argue that Nietzsche criticizes moral values from a position that is privileged in some way, using a form of realism or a non-realism, are incorrect. Leiter concludes that in his revaluation of moral values “Nietzsche’s own evaluative perspective in…
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This article was written by Nadeem Hussain and published in 2013. In it Hussain revises the view of Nietzsche’s metaethical position that he described six years earlier, in his article “Honest Illusions: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits.” He reviews the different metaethical positions he and other philosophers have attributed to Nietzsche and he finds them…
This paper was written by Nadeem Hussain and published in 2007. It outlines the textual challenges for accurately interpreting the metaethical position implied by Nietzsche’s critique of morality. He illustrates the problems with the interpretation that holds the will to power is, itself, a fundamental moral value. He describes this as a form of moral…
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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…