Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Maximum Power and Its Philosophical Roots: The Critical Importance Today of the Ideas of Howard Odum and Friedrich Nietzsche

Maximum Power and Its Philosophical Roots: The Critical Importance Today of the Ideas of Howard Odum and Friedrich Nietzsche

McWhirter, Timothy

Paperback

PhilosophyEnvironmental StudiesPhysics

ISBN10: 3031806212
ISBN13: 9783031806216
Publisher: Springer
Published: Feb 11 2025
Pages: 146
Weight: 0.53
Height: 0.35 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

This Briefs volume focuses on the maximum power principle, which was created by the mathematician and physical chemist Alfred Lotka, and further developed and utilized most prominently by the systems ecologist H. T. Odum, who applied it to different physical, biological, ecological and economic systems. They both described this principle providing a thermodynamic framework for evolutionary theory. This principle has a philosophical heritage that has, until now, gone unrecognized. The 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche viewed his concept of the will to power as an empirical principle that describes how organic and inorganic systems develop in ways that grow in power. This book describes this interdisciplinary story: it discusses the development of both principles, reviews the empirical and theoretical support for them, critically examines their alleged limitations, and describes their philosophical implications, evidenced in a particularly provocative manner by Nietzsche's and Odum's critiques of moral and religious values.

Also in

Physics

View All