Customer Reviews

Entropy: A New World View

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The thermodynamic basis of this work is unsupportable.

The problem, simply put, is this: while it sounds convincing to most lay-people (and even many physicists, chemists and engineers) to equate thermodynamic entropy with "disorder", this is based on a meaningless misinterpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics simply states that energy tends to disperse, if it is not hindered from doing so. It says nothing about "orderliness", and nothing about availability of matter.

Entropy is an extensive property of thermodynamic systems. It is not a property of energy, and certainly not of matter. It is nonsensical to speak of "high- or low-entropy" energy. It is even more nonsensical to speak of "high- or low-entropy" matter. Better to speak of energy quality ("the sun provides us with high-quality energy, and low-quality energy is re-radiated back into space"). Entropy is used to measure the "concentration" (I use this term for illustration only) and hence the usefulness or availability to us of energy, within a given system of matter and energy. The second law of thermodynamics tells us nothing about the tendency of matter to become more or less useful or available to us. There is no thermodynamic basis for reading inevitable decay onto physical, biological or social systems.

Dr. Frank L. Lambert, Professor Emeritus (Chemistry) of Occidental College, Los Angeles, has carried out extensive work over the past few years to demythologise the popular (and, all too frequently, specialist) misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. For anyone contemplating reading "The entropy law and the economic process", I would strongly advise that you first look at Lambert's website: http://www.entropysite.com. He goes through this in detail in multiple format aimed at a range of audiences from lay-person to scientist and engineer.

This review is not intended to be disparaging, towards either the authors, or others who share the common misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. The problem is deeply entrenched and it will be a long time before the myths around entropy and the second law are dispelled.

A review similar to this has been posted for other popular books that misrepresent the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy. So far:
-Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's "The entropy law and the economic process"
-Fritjof Capra's "The web of life"

Others may be added to this list in due course.

It is hard to think of anything more important or interesting than applying the truth of physics to everyday life. In this book, Rifkin efficiently dismantles the predominant/global capitalist economic paradigm with the simple, undeniable pillars of physics and thermodynamics. For the blind mice of the developed world - happily living in debt and consuming beyond their means and needs - physics is a forgotten high school annoyance. Rifkin's thesis quickly turns this annoyance into fear, and ultimately understanding, by reminding us that the modern developed world is indeed living on borrowed time and limited resources. Yes, the book becomes repetitive, but then again, Rifkin's point deserves repeating.

Read the first 4-5 chapters of this book and change your perspective on capitalism and your own footprint on this planet...

It is almost unfair to review this book, because it has been roundly and rightly ignored for so many years. Mr. Rifkin, for the sake of his more recent work, likely wishes to keep things that way. To anyone interested in thermodynamics, simply look elsewhere; this book is not about entropy in any sense common to science (or English). To those interested in ecology, do not pollute your arguments with this babble. This book is a study in how not to do background research, and how not to construct an argument. The Amazon.com cliché is totally apt: this is the worst book I have ever read.

Rifkin and Howard want to show that energy consumption has accelerated over history, and that we should curb the trend. It's a reasonable sentiment. Unfortunately, they try to make their case for the impending destruction of Earth by borrowing the concept of entropy, or disorder. We all know that energy consumption has been rising ever faster; the authors point out that the laws of thermodynamics dictate that entropy on Earth must also be rising ever faster. Consequently, if these trends continue, disorder will rule and the planet will crumble into dead chaos. The authors prescribe a return to "low-entropy" lifestyles, as in the Classical Age.

Fortunately for us, the laws of thermodynamics do not agree. The authors also do not seem to realize that planet with life is more ordered (has lower entropy) than pre-biotic Earth. Similarly, entropy is mighty low where billions of complicated humans (not to mention other species) interact in countless ways in a miraculous, self-perpetuating system of systems within systems. With each building erected, manatee born, or stock market founded, Earth's entropy falls.

Let's leave aside the cartoonish five page summary of Western history (from an "entropic" view point), and the fact that this volume is cited more by creation scientists (Google it yourself) than by anyone else. The authors have no idea what they're talking about. When you see Entropy at a garage sale, thrift store, or dump, feel free to leaf through it and laugh, but be sure to leave it there.

P.S. One reviewer of Rifkin's Algeny (I think) noted that Rifkin has actually (maybe accidentally) written some useful volumes (Algeny was not one, however--see S.J. Gould in Discovery magazine). Based on Rifkin's new faith in the "hydrogen economy," I can't believe it.

As the authors say about entropy, it requires some intuitivity to understand this book. And I say as a person majored in physics this book is really amazing. I have never read such kind of a book before covering nearly all of life somehow. The very first times I had read the book I used to give lots of illustrations from it within my discussions with others in my department. Some thought I had gone too far with the book but the ones who read the book appreciated it as much as I did. The book requires an understanding of sciencetific thinking unfortunately.

and that is saying quite a bit considering I have read tens of thousands of books over my lifetime. I find it a bit hilarious that people here and elsewhere refuse to acknowledge the relevance and importance of the concepts introduced in this book - it was far far ahead of it's time and yet almost no one recognizes the elegance and simplicity of the arguments it puts forth.

The basic argument of this book is that the ironically named 'Second' Law of Thermodynamics is the most important force/law in the universe. Like many brilliant ideas, the law itself is quite succinct - you can search wikipedia for 'second law of thermodynamics' for all the various interpretations.

Entropy as the term is used in Rifkin's book, refers to irreversibility at primarily a macroscopic level in the universe, or more tersely, 'time's arrow'. In a nutshell, over time, all systems in the universe (other than a few weird quantum behaviors) move generally from a state of order to one of disorder. Order in a local system can only be maintained thru temporarily increased use of energy, which of course eventually moves the system even further down the road to disorder - the ultimate end of which is the heat death of the universe.

IMO, this is an extremely useful and elegant way to look at life and the universe around us. Look at your life in particular - pick out a small aspect of it - buying a car for example. Before you came into being, all of the material used in the manufacture of the car you would someday buy was concentrated in deposits of minerals and resources all over the world - iron ore in Minnesota, coal in West Vriginia, oil for the plastic in Saudi Arabia etc etc etc. Now you come along and order a car and the car company obliges you by digging all these elements out of the ground, and using massive quantities of energy - coals, oil, electricity etc. to ORGANIZE all these materials into what will become your personal mode of transporation. And what happens as soon as the car is completed ? - even before you drive it off the lot - rust has begun to invade the underside of the body panels, the plastic coating on the wiring begins to decay, the paint gets a tiny bit faded and begins to peel and chip. Ten or twenty years later, there are microsopic particles from your car scattered all over the countryside - bits of rubber on the interstate, rust chips in your driveway and at the Grand Canyon, bits of rubber from your windshield wipers in your grandma's garage.

This process of continual decay is IRREVERSIBLE absent the application of monumental quantities of energy - i.e. you can't put that car back together from it's constituent materials because the system consisting of your auto has gone from a state of near perfect order (brand new off the lot) to one of almost complete disorder (scattered all over the planet in tiny microscopic pieces). Of course if you had enough 'free' energy, you could theoretically, reconstruct your car by tracking down every individual particle and reconstituting it - BUT ... and here is the beauty of Rifkin's idea ... just by USING that energy, you are FURTHER increasing the entropy of the world around you - because in order to ORGANIZE that energy into a useful form, requires that furher massive amounts of raw materials be dug out of the ground. In the end all those nice piles of oil and iron ore and coal are scattered hither and yon, never to be useful again - at least by humans as we now stand. EVERYTHING we do increases the entropy of the systems around us.

It's a rigged game and the only way to win is not to play - to use as little energy as is practically possible.

Personally, I don't care if Rifkin has violated the sensitivities of some narrow-minded academic somewhere, his use of the term entropy to describe the fundamental processes of everyday life is a true breakthrough in thought and planning.

Again - THE most important book/principle you will ever grasp (or not) in your entire life. If you don't understand the Entropy Principle as it is used in this tome, then you will forever be doomed to mediocre, flawed solutions to the most basic problems in everyday life. It's why the solutions to our problems just create even more problems down the road.

If you 'get' Entropy, you will never look at the world around you in the same way again.

I've really enjoyed reading this book 30 years after it was written, especially curious to see where the author hit and missed the marks on his projections. I was pleasantly surprised to see a small warning on global warming, obviously very relavent these days. The historical placement of the writing of the book has interesting parallels, he wrote it during the energy crisis of the seventies, during the cold war, pre-Chernobyl, pre-IBM PC, etc., and here we are with gasoline recently nearing $5/gallon, fighting two wars not directly related to homeland defense, collapsing corporations being swallowed up by larger ones with government bailouts and talks of further government control, ie, all kinds of cracks in the energy flow line. The real test of the book's projections will be in the next five years, when all of those former third world countries, that have now become highly consumptive of raw materials, have had a chance to consume at a high rate for a length of time.

As for those physicists who question Rifkin's application of the second law to the various macromodels, I think even the author himself was not confident in making a serious scientific statement, he was more interested in getting out the overall message that we must preserve our non-renewable resources and allow nature time to catch up to our acquisitions of renewable resources. This is very relevant to today's fisheries for example. All of the mineral resources he cited, particulary copper, are now very expensive, so much so that thieves are now regularly stripping the metals from our highways, cemeteries, and public works.

Even though our health care, transportation and education systems are in shambles, not all is bad, many urban areas have revived, people are adjusting and changing lifestyles, conserving and recycling more, consuming less, driving smaller cars, there is greater investment and interest in clean, renewable energy, etc.

I do concur with Rifkin's overall goal of sustainable growth.

Rifkin's ideas about physics may or may not be on solid ground, but he's predicted many apocalyptic realities with regard to the environment. And for this we must give him much credit. We have to remember. This book was written going on thirty years ago, before our era of manifest global warming. He predicted a warming of the planet. He doesn't call it "peek oil," as it's called today, but this is what he warns us about way back when.

His theory that the so-called Middle Ages ended with the advent of coal as a fuel source is intriguing. It sounds plausible to me. The way we get energy must have a lot to do with the way society is structured. We can certainly say this about agriculture. Once man began cultivating land, the concept of wealth was created, no less...

But back to the many predictions Rifkin made in this book: He warned these many years ago about the dangers of synthetic petrochemical nitrogen fertilizers choking our waters. Imagine that! No one was talking about that then and not even now. The Clean Water Act of 1972 does not address toxic runoff from farms and until that legislation is amended, our waters will be polluted. All over the world, runoff is truly one of the greatest environmental threats; we know this now for certain.

Rifkin, back then, long before the rest of us, was writing about the junk thrown in the oceans. Today we have a whirlpool of the size of Greenland over Midway Island densely clogged with plastic refuse, suffocating and starving out wildlife there.

Some environmentalists today (too, too few) are lamenting the advent of the flushing toilet. Rifkin does not point this out specifically, but he does note how our coasts were, even back then, poisoned by sewage.

The discord among nations today is all about oil, water, land, and natural resources of all sorts. Do we dare admit? This is one of Rifkin's main themes and rightly so. G. W. Bush can say we went into Iraq to bring that country democracy, but we all know, it was about oil.

They say today that if everyone on Earth lived as we do in the USA, the world would require the natural resources of five planet Earths. Rifkin alluded to this fact in this book and so long ago. Amazing.

It's taken me years of reading the environmental literature to discover the above information. And I could have found it all in this book decades ago.

There's lots more; I can't note it all. How 'bout, just read the book.

Rifkin stresses the responsibility of the humans for their own survival and for life on planet in general, bringing in the question of faith and convenant of God and Man. Earth is not man-made but the conditions on it predominantly are. The book does not support the belief that ways out of energy crisis can be found through technological progress, molecular biology, genetic manipulations, not through just recycling and ecology as-is. It calls for turn in ways of life of modern civilisation in order to sustain itself into the future; more responsibility - less comodity & consumerism. Neither the science ( or the scientists for that matter) are the savers of the world and that's why this book is so unpopular with the scientists.
This is a review of the man-made state on earth, for answers on how to solve entropy problems or as a matter of fact, study on entropy, look elsewhere.

It's a very challenging view of the world and how it works. It is written in a nice language, easy to follow. Unfortunately, the writer does not know his thermodynamics enough and makes quite unaccurate analogies, that could be interesting if they did not have the mark of Scientifism given by the improper use of the idea of Entropy.
I have enjoyed other books written by Rifkin and it would be nice if he sticks to what he really knows about politics, without trying to get into fields that he does not know enough.

I read this book as an undergrad mechanical engineering major, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. To state that the second law and the concept of Entropy applies to social systems, governments and societies in addition to physical systems means essentially that Entropy is the fundamental reason behind the fall of Rome, the decline of the British Empire, and the eventual decline of good old USA. Any social system will eventually get bogged down under its own weight. The only downside to the book is the religion that creeps in at the very end. any intelligent person should read this book!