A thermodynamic representation of society as the working body of a heat engine. [3]

“In the inorganic world we find the power of combination growing with the increase of differences. Place a thousand atoms of oxygen in a receiver, and they will remain motionless; but introduce a single atom of carbon, and excite their affinities for each other, and at once motion will be produced. Such being the case in regard to all other matter, it must be so in regard to those combinations in which man is concerned, indicated by the term society.”

— George Carey (1858), Principles of Social Science (§8: On The Formation of Society)

“Even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society—it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.”

— Karl Marx (1867), Capital: a Critique of Political Economy [2]