Georgescu-Roegen

["RICHARD P.F. HOLT" <holtri@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PKTers,
Richard Nolan has been kind enough to write an obituary for us on
Georgescu-Roegen. We will put the piece in the pkt directory for
obituaries.
-Ric Holt

Geogescu-Roegen: Obituary
Nicholas was born in Romania and whilst a superb mathematical
technician, he never lost his 'peasant's sense' of reality.  An
unusual economist who was called by Paul Samuelson 'an economist's
economist'.
He was one of the very few economists who took seriously the dictum
that equations are not just between numbers but relate dimensioned
quantities.  He used the implications of this to refute a 'proof' by
Paul Sweezy that capitalism must inevitably collapse.
He criticised the neo-classical production function as being
unsuitable for analysing agriculture where we don't have control over
nature and he endeavoured to have economists consider the limitations
the actual nature of the physical world might impose on what humans
can and cannot do.  He did not believe in infinite substitutability.
In his 'The Entropy Law and the Economic Process' he set out to
deliniate the relationship between economic activity and what he, on
an interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics, saw as the
inevitable degradation of the earth.
Entropy, loss of potential, increased dispersion he thought was the
basis of scarcity and thereby of conflict.  He particularly did not
regard economics as a theoretical science in the manner of physics
but as an era specific set of propositions.
His reach was broad, much broader than is currently the case for most
members of our profession.  This made his writings inaccessible to
many economists.  Kenneth Boulding, now unhappily also gone,  was an
exception.
His view of the role of entropy in the physical world and its
possible implications for economics is controversial. It is this
author's view that ultimately Georgescu was wrong but the inabilty of
the profession to read and understand what he was trying to tell us
prevented his writings from achieving their minimum status of the
fruitful error, the hypothesis which forces us to lokk more closely
and deeply than before.
We need more bold thinkers like him and an end to the narrowness
which separates economics too often from the actuality of the world.
Richard C.Nolan