Scarcity’s Ways: The Origins of Capital: A Critical Essay on Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics and Economics

233 Pages·1997·4.066 MB·English

by  Michael S. Macrakis (auth.)

SCARCITY'S WAYS:
THE ORIGINS OF CAPITAL
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editor
ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University
MARX W. WARTOFSKY t (Editor 1960-1997)
Editorial Advisory Board
THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University
ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University ofP ittsburgh
SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University
JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University
VOLUME 176
MICHAELS. MACRAKIS
SCARCITY'S WAYS:
THE ORIGINS OF CAPITAL
A Critical Essay on Thermodynamics,
Statistical Mechanics and Economics
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-90-481-4919-3 ISBN 978-94-015-8861-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8861-4
Printed on acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
Dedicated to Lily, Stavros,
Kristie and Michele
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I PREFACE & INTRODUCTION 1
II ECONOMICS 17
1. Capital Theory 18
2. Whence Capital 33
3. La Raison Dialectique 40
4. Summary 52
5. A Note on Philosophical Terms 54
III BIOLOGY 61
1. Introduction, Biology 101 61
[The Economics of Biology]
2. Biology 201 72
[The Dialectics of Biology] 87
3. Philosophical Issues 87
4. Conclusions 88
IV THERMODYNAMICS (8~cs),
STATISTICAL MECHANICS,
AND CAPITAL 93
1. Introduction 93
2. Nephelokokkygia #1 94
3. Nephelokokkygia #2 104
4. Intermezzo 117
viii
v
THERMODYNAMICS (8~ cs),
WORK, AND CAPITAL 125
1. Work, all Work and Nothing but Work 125
2. Biological Work, Microscopic Engines 138
3. Measurement in Physics 151
VI SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 173
VII APPENDICES 183
1. On Thermodynamics and
Statistic Mechanics 185
2. Availability 191
3. Thermoeconomics 194
4. Tractatus de Signis.
Utilitarian Concerns and Scarcity 196
5. Prolegomena on Measurement 206
VIII BIBLIOGRAPHY 215
INDEX 223
LIST OF FIGURES
11-1 The Structure of an Input-Output table 21
11-2 Philosophical Schools 57
11-3 Past and Future 59
111-1 Lwoff' s energy flows in biological systems 6o
111-2 An elementary Input-Output table biological 65
1-0 table
111-3 The Central Dogma illustrated 67
111-4 Towards the development of a biological 70
1-0 table
IV-1 A reductionist, meliorative program 106
IV-2 Evolution of Structures ll9
V-1 (a) Heat transfer at an interface and (b) the 132
Carnot Engine with a shaft for work
V-2 The Steam-Water and the ATP-ADP cycles 140
V-3 Huxley's Z-Plates 142
V-4 The Szilard box 146
V-5 The LEED set-up (schematic) 164
V-6 The Stem-Gerlach set-up 166
VI-1 U for UNIVERSE 172
A-1 The grand canonical ensemble. Region II 189
A-2 Experimental Categories 208-g
CHAPTER I
PREFACE & INTRODUCTION
THE PRINCIPAL ISSUES ADDRESSED in this exploratory es
say are the Origins of Capital and the Foundations of Ther
modynamics.
In the economic literature the existence of capital is taken for
granted yet it is difficult to establish a robust definition of
capital and to circumscribe its functions. Capital theory -
the principal subject of Political Economy - is a theory
which concerns itself with the coupling of the present with
the future; as such it does not deal with its own history, its
evolution or its origins. Yet, in its generic or reference form,
capital is nothing but a physical or biological engine which
processes materials and transforms energy in a physical en
vironment of thermal non-equilibrium and of resource con
straints. The objective of this essay is to connect the two
themes of capital and thermodynamics and show the tight
relation between the question of the origin of capital and the
essentiality of capital in the comprehension of thermodynam
ics.
To attain the objectives and support my position, a review of
capital theory - as presently understood-of evolutionary
biology and the origins of life, and of the received ideas on
1
2 THE ORIGINS OF CAPITAL
thermodynamics became essential. The motivation and the
mechanics for this ambitious program deserve some intro
ductory remarks.1
The subject matter of this essay has been worked and re
worked over the last several years as I have been puzzling
first about problems concerning the fundamental issues of
statistical mechanics, and then about problems relating to en
ergy policy, economics and the thermodynamics of energy
conservation. These inquiries originated and advanced in
quite different settings and environments and involved vari
ous professional fields normally considered totally decoup
led. Yet their junctions have been the inspiration and the jus
tification of this essay.
Some twenty odd years ago I was working in various as
pects of plasma physics and in particular the theory of inter
action of electromagnetic waves with matter and its fluctua
tions. The field stands on the study of transport theory, sta
tistical mechanics, and the thermodynamics of many-body
systems. But when one scratches the integument of these
beautiful edifices by studying the literature, deep questions
arise as to the legitimacy of thermodynamics and of statistical
mechanics in addressing the puzzle of irreversibility. It is in
deed difficult to make up one's mind whether some of this
work is a work of art or the result of calculation and deriva
tion. With legerdemain the various authors seem to make in
cursions into the "microscopies" of the many-body problem
through the two-, three-, and the n-th particle correlation
functions and then switch to the macroscopics of temperature
1 In what follows an author's name followed by a parenthesis with year of
publication and often a page number refers to the bibliography at the end of
the book.