Garrett Hardin, Living within Limits

What is a limitation?

boundary
restraint
restriction

"Nothing lasts" seems to be a worthy belief to reject. By reminding us of our own mortality the statement is a stark reminder that we are not in control. Instead we seem to be in a stream, and worse, yet, we appear to be governed by forces over which we have no control. Thus for several hundred years many people have chosen to ignore the obvious, we live at the sufferance of something else, something bigger, something incomprehensible."

By asking "What is a limit?" We, at least, may entertain the capacity to understand that:

nothing grows forever,

the larger something grows the more constraints also grow,

it takes time to correct errors,

you can't get something for nothing,

every achievement has a consequence,

all side-effects are effects,

any system can be understood only by applying the concept of feedback.

Tragedy of the Commons | Ecological Literacy | Folly as a Limit

These limits are based on laws of thermodynamics:

The amount of available energy can neither be increased nor decreased.
Every conversion of energy from one form to another waste hear steadily increases.
Eventually all energy will be converted into unrecoverable heat.

Is a limit to our activity the amount of energy we generate?

"Because energy is needed to support all life, population problems are inextricably tied in with the properties of energy."

(40)

"The second law of thermodynamics holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature." Eddington

"Science is not about words, but it must be explained with words–which are never wholly satisfactory."

eternal truths
self-evident propositions
Postulates of Impotence

G. Hardin, Living within Limits,

What is the relation among, force, power and energy?

The Threefold Way: literacy, numeracy, & ecolacy.

Literate -- can you read intelligently?

Numerate -- can you count accurately?

Ecolate-- can you act appropriately?

An ecolate approach to regional planning, health or justice.

Ecolacy as practicing adaptive management.

Ecolate approach to problem solving for social justice.

Culture is defined two ways: literal & figurative?

The totality of human creations vs. the best we create.

From simple plant materials the American woman weaves a basket that holds the materials needed for her life.

The First Law of Ecology is : “We can never do merely one thing.”

“Abusus non tollit usum.” “the abuse of a thing does not bar its use.”

“Prudence dictates that we compare the advantages and disadvantages of all proposed courses of action [and inaction], choosing the one that, on the balance is quantitatively best.”

(65)

The folly of mistaking material for mental progress is widespread.

“Nature has assigned no limit to the perfecting of the human faculties . . . the perfectibility of man is truly indefinite.”

Marquis de Condorcet (1789)

“Anything we can dream of, we can invent. Anything we can invent, we are required to use.”

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

“Traditional language often throws a smokescreen over problems:

1) Waste is a mental construct, not an objective reality.
2) Objectively speaking, there are no side effects.
3) There is no away to throw to.
4) All so called ‘pesticides’ are, in reality, biocides, substances that kill life.

Interventions always need to be audited & evaluated with three filters.

Significant interventions in the world are always interventions in systems, of which three kinds can be usefully distinguished:

Organisms: a fantastically complicated system of cells, tissues, organs. . . .

Systems of organisms: our well being depends on the survival in good health of many other kinds of plants, animals, and microorganisms.

Political systems: preservation, conservation, allocation, or political economy

“Even with the ecological focus on man (as it is in “human ecology”), the bearing of other living things on the welfare of human beings is not neglected (as it all too often is in economics).”

“At high rates of interest the present value of the distant future effectively vanishes.”

“A culture of poverty is one in which the future is discounted -- at a very high rate.”

Garrett Hardin, Filters Against Folly, How to Survive..,New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Now compare that summary to this statement by Hardin

(1959) in Nature and Man’s Fate:

“A. N. Whitehead has said, ‘Seek simplicity; and distrust it.’ It is difficult to imagine a more fruitful guide for scientific research. To see anything at all, we must abstract a few elements from the infinite totality; but when we do, we undoubtedly warp the truth. Therefore we must secondly -- and it must be secondly, and not at first, -- we must secondly turn a suspicious eye on the simplicity we have found and see in what way it is false to the facts.…Such is the dialectic of intellectual inquiry.”

(72)

Numerate proficiency is a doorway to another view of reality:

Numeracy, the ability to understand and work with numbers; for example ratios, percentages, and rates of change.

Impotency

You cannot square a circle.

In living creatures any increases in the surface area occur as a square of the cubic increases in the volume of the organism.

No tree grows to the sky.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How do we measure the forces we see around us?

force, power and energy

force is equal to mass times velocity. f = m*v

power is the amount of force acting against opposition (friction or impedance).

energy is the capacity or ability to do work, create an outcome.