Re: [Fis] Ecological Economics and Information

Dear FIS colleagues,

In the bibliography that Luis cited days ago, there is a very interesting
exchange of rounds between Herman Daly and Robert Solow. The Kuhnian
'paradigm clash' between these figures of opposed schools of thought
becomes quite transparent. Indeed their respective econometrics correspond
to very different 'ways of thinking' and by extension to very different
'ways of life'.

I tend to disagree, however, in the basic questions that Herman Daly
addresses to Robert Solow about thermodynamics and the Second Principle. To
say it very briefly "the tool has been put on the altar". Without denying
the interest and importance of thermodynamics as an analytical tool on
energy matters both for the biosphere and the homosphere, I really doubt
that it has potential to provide any further social guidance.

Adumbrating properly the elements of a new synthesis ('the hidden
connections' for Fritjof Capra, 2002) where the ecological economic
problems dovetail with the really strategic social directions of
contemporary change, should be taken as an enormous challenge, and as a
common concern open to a plurality of scientific and non-scientific
approaches. As I was arguing in my last message, the creation and
maintenance of social complexity depends fundamentally on the immaterial
side (particularly including items such as justice, ethics, morals,
esthetics, political wisdom, etc.) Just the types of knowledge almost
impervious to our contemporary scientific analysis.

Trying to be more concrete, let me cite Capra on a few necessary directions
of ecological-economic change: industrial 'closure' (implying the
transition from open linear chains of resource-product-waste to a networked
'industrial ecology'), service renting rather than consumption, urban
ecodesign and energy efficiency, drastic population stabilization, new
farming and agroindustrial schemes, etc., and last but not least an
in-depth reform of international bodies: United Nations, Monetary Fund,
World Bank... But finally, all of this might be just a miscellany of
wishful thinking at planetary level.

I find quite symbolic that the earliest ecological manifest in the Western
world did not arrive from any 'Ivy League' scientist or European
intellectual, or from any Christian leader, but from the Indian chief
Seattle of a modest Suquamish tribe (see
http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/wslibrry.htm for a critical reappraisal
of his famous speech)

Rather than standing on our disciplinary and interdisciplinary certainties,
shouldn't we focus on the 'voids' and malfunctions of our contemporary
system of knowledge?

best

Pedro

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Received on Fri Nov 21 11:52:20 2003