Overview
In 1935, Becker, in his Progress and Power, a series of three lectures delivered in April at Stanford University, subtitled his third lecture as follows:
At the end of which he employs the ‘cosmic intelligence’ perspective (see: advanced perspective), describing humans as bits of animate matter, as follows:
“Thus, conveniently placed, and equipped with ‘cosmic intelligence’, we look out upon a universe that comprises perhaps a billion galaxies, each galaxy comprising perhaps ten thousand million stars. If we look long and attentively we may detect, within one of the lesser galaxies, one of the lesser stars which is called the sun; and, circling round this sun, one of its lesser planets which is called the earth. At some moment, relatively early, in the 150,000 million years which is the sun's span of life, we note that certain bits of matter on the surface of the earth, by virtue of temperatures not elsewhere obtaining, assume unusually complicated forms and behave in unusually unstable ways. We understand that certain of these bits of animated dust distinguish themselves from others, dignify themselves with the name of ‘man’, and take credit for having a unique quality which they call ‘intelligence’. They are not aware that intelligence is no merit; the reverse rather, since it is only an inferior form of energy which nature has given them in partial compensation for the extreme rapidity with which the law of entropy (dS/dt is always positive) degrades their vitality. So long as the sun maintains on earth the necessary temperature, these bits of animated matter will no doubt continue to manifest a perceptible movement, a measurable although diminishing energy. But their activities, however long continued, are infinitesimal in extent and impotent in effect, of no consequence to the universe, admittedly one of nature's indiscretions, worth noting only because rare and unaccountable: of no consequence to the universe, or in the end to them either, since within a brief moment of eternal time the light of the sun will inevitably wane, the earth will grow cold, and all of man's alleged ‘imperishable monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds’ will be as if they had never been, nor will anything that then is be either better or worse because of anything that man has ever done or ever wished to do.”
Here, without prolonged digression, we see the over-typical laymanized so-called ‘pessimistic or degradation’ view of entropy, which is incorrect.
Quotes | On
The following are quotes on Becker:
“The awareness of historic fatality or ‘historic determinism’ is deeply connected with the problem of time and irreversibility. But these ideas, no less than those notions of statistical averages and probabilities mentioned above, are concepts that belong primarily to the field of thermodynamics, where they possess greater scope, precision, and universality. It is therefore not surprising that a kinship of some kind has been suspected between their bearing in the domain of history and even more so in that of biology—particularly in relation to the theory of evolution—and their meaning in the field of thermodynamics. The exact nature of this relationship has been a matter of growing interest to scientists if not to historians. Yet the challenge of the problem has not altogether escaped their attention: this professor Carl Becker, for instance, found occasion to use the symbol of increasing entropy — ‘ds/dt is always positive’ — as a suggestive subheading to the last chapter of his fascinating book Progress and Power. But certainly, among historians no one has been as instant as Henry Adams in attempting to establish a relationship between the historic process and the phase rule of Willard Gibbs in an effort to achieve that science of history which he believed to be firmly implied in the universal formulae of thermodynamics.”— Roderick Seidenberg (1950), Post-Historic Man: an Inquiry [1]
References
1. (a) Becker, Carl. (1935). Progress and Power: Lectures delivered at Stanford University, April (Introduction: Leo Gershoy) (Arc) (entropy, pg. 113). Alfred Knopf, 1958.
(b) Seidenberg, Roderick. (1950). Posthistoric Man: an Inquiry (pg. 113). University of North Carolina Press.
External links
● Carl L. Becker – Wikipedia.
● Carl Becker – Britannica.
