Dale Easley's Favorite Quotations

Dale Easley's Favorite Quotations

Berry, Thomas

Economics: Its Effects on the Life Systems of the World

Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology, edited by Longeron, A. and C. Richards

Berry, Thomas

A SLOWLY EMERGING SENSE The new sense of what economics is all about has emerged from the naturalist Aldo Leopold in his essay, "A Land Ethic," from an independent biologist, Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring, and from the economist, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, in 'The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). Georgescu-Roegen, in particular, had a profound sense of the economic implications of the second law of thermodynamics. Before his time no modern economic system yet had any realization of the earth system itself as the primary functional context of life in all its aspects. Every modern economic system from the mercantile and physiocrat theories of the 17th and 18th centuries, to the supply-demand theories of Keynes is homocentric and exploitive. The natural world is considered as a resource for human utility, not as a functioning community of mutually supporting life systems within which the human must discover its proper role.

The basic critique of Georgescu-Roegen is that economists were caught in a mechanistic world that could be understood simply from within its own economic data. So with this model, derived from Newtonian cosmology, the economists in their theories and the corporations with their practice sought to manage the economic world from within such a limited context. Economics was a closed process of commercial transactions with reference only to the production and exchange of goods. As Georgescu-Roegen indicates, ``Economists do speak occasionally of natural resources. Yet the fact remains that, search as one may, in none of the economic models in existence is there a variable standing for nature's perennial contribution'' (The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, p.2). He also notes, ``The fact that biological and economic factors may overlap and interact in some surprising ways, though well established, is little known among economists'' (p. 317).

Even now corporations feel imposed upon when they are required to make environmental impact statements concerning their intrusion into the natural world, when they are required to refrain from scattering industrial waste over the land, to indicate to their workers the toxic nature of the materials they are working with, or when they are required to list the chemical contents of their products.

There is a certain pathos in social reform movements and in the efforts made to improve the living conditions of the impoverished within the context of such a dysfunctional and non-sustainable economy. This is understandable however since life necessities, air and water, food, clothing and shelter, are demanded presently. Tomorrow is too late. Whatever the existing economy, human need must be supplied, even though food today for the few may be starvation tomorrow for the many. This means jobs within the existing context. No immediate alternative seems available.

Even so, an awareness should exist that the present system is too devastating to the natural fruitfulness of the earth to long supply human needs. Alterative programs are being elaborated and becoming functional. If the moral norm of economics is what is happening to the millions of persons in need, then these more functional economic developments are required not only by those excluded from the present system but by the entire nation community, by the entire human community, and by the entire earth community. [pp.~12-13]

We need a new type of religious orientation. This must, in my view, emerge from our new story of the universe. This constitutes, it seems, a new revelatory experience which can be understood as soon as we ~recognize that the evolutionary process is from the beginning a spiritual as well as a physical process. The difficulty so far has been that this story has been told simply as a physical process. Now, however, the scientists themselves are awakening to the wonder and the mystery of the universe, even to its numinous qualities. They begin to experience also the mythic aspect of their own scientific expressions. Every term used in science is laden with greater mythic meaning than rational comprehension. Thus science has overcome its earlier limitations out of its own resources. [p.~25]

Economics: Its Effects on the Life Systems of the World
Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology, edited by Longeron, A. and C. Richards
Berry, Thomas
A SLOWLY EMERGING SENSE The new sense of what economics is all about has emerged from the naturalist Aldo Leopold in his essay, "A Land Ethic," from an independent biologist, Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring, and from the economist, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, in 'The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). Georgescu-Roegen, in particular, had a profound sense of the economic implications of the second law of thermodynamics. Before his time no modern economic system yet had any realization of the earth system itself as the primary functional context of life in all its aspects. Every modern economic system from the mercantile and physiocrat theories of the 17th and 18th centuries, to the supply-demand theories of Keynes is homocentric and exploitive. The natural world is considered as a resource for human utility, not as a functioning community of mutually supporting life systems within which the human must discover its proper role. The basic critique of Georgescu-Roegen is that economists were caught in a mechanistic world that could be understood simply from within its own economic data. So with this model, derived from Newtonian cosmology, the economists in their theories and the corporations with their practice sought to manage the economic world from within such a limited context. Economics was a closed process of commercial transactions with reference only to the production and exchange of goods. As Georgescu-Roegen indicates, ``Economists do speak occasionally of natural resources. Yet the fact remains that, search as one may, in none of the economic models in existence is there a variable standing for nature's perennial contribution'' (The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, p.2). He also notes, ``The fact that biological and economic factors may overlap and interact in some surprising ways, though well established, is little known among economists'' (p. 317). Even now corporations feel imposed upon when they are required to make environmental impact statements concerning their intrusion into the natural world, when they are required to refrain from scattering industrial waste over the land, to indicate to their workers the toxic nature of the materials they are working with, or when they are required to list the chemical contents of their products. There is a certain pathos in social reform movements and in the efforts made to improve the living conditions of the impoverished within the context of such a dysfunctional and non-sustainable economy. This is understandable however since life necessities, air and water, food, clothing and shelter, are demanded presently. Tomorrow is too late. Whatever the existing economy, human need must be supplied, even though food today for the few may be starvation tomorrow for the many. This means jobs within the existing context. No immediate alternative seems available. Even so, an awareness should exist that the present system is too devastating to the natural fruitfulness of the earth to long supply human needs. Alterative programs are being elaborated and becoming functional. If the moral norm of economics is what is happening to the millions of persons in need, then these more functional economic developments are required not only by those excluded from the present system but by the entire nation community, by the entire human community, and by the entire earth community. [pp.~12-13] We need a new type of religious orientation. This must, in my view, emerge from our new story of the universe. This constitutes, it seems, a new revelatory experience which can be understood as soon as we ~recognize that the evolutionary process is from the beginning a spiritual as well as a physical process. The difficulty so far has been that this story has been told simply as a physical process. Now, however, the scientists themselves are awakening to the wonder and the mystery of the universe, even to its numinous qualities. They begin to experience also the mythic aspect of their own scientific expressions. Every term used in science is laden with greater mythic meaning than rational comprehension. Thus science has overcome its earlier limitations out of its own resources. [p.~25]

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