On the eschatology of the human condition

On the eschatology of the human condition

We are now facing a crisis concerning the availability of an assured supply of energy and other resources to feed the ravenous productive capacity of our society. Complicating this critical situation is the problem of controlling the unwanted byproducts of production and consumption. Our present situation stands in striking contrast to the ubiquitous pattern of growth and expansion evidenced by nearly every aspect of what has come to be known as civilization during the past century. We can no longer avoid, nor dare we postpone, the obligation to investigate these issues in a serious and expeditious manner in order to ascertain whether the present reverses are but temporary diversions and fluctuations from a long range pattern of stable and sustainable growth, or whether they are harbingers of limits to expansion imposed by nature, limits which cannot be passed with impunity. Our investigation must, insofar as it is able, be scientific; stripping away the superficialities of mere experience in order to uncover the underlying motive forces which frame and mold the opportunities and constraints whose realizations we recognize in the continuing progression of daily events. As in so many fields whose mysteries have been revealed through diligent application of the methods of science, here too we may expect to find that superficial experience misleads and diverts the attention from the matter of essential significance.

Exponential growth

In the issue at hand the lesson taught by the immediate experience of life in America and the other industrial nations is that continuing exponential growth, growth which cumulates according to the law of compound interest, growth without limit or constraint, is the natural human condition. The more reflective amongst us may examine the historical record to penetrate beyond the present and the immediate past, but they too find evidence to support the conclusion of immediate experience unless they search so far into the past that the very nature of society seems so different from our own as to invalidate any method or even hope of comparison. Yet the Malthusian critique, in forms more or less sophisticated, remains to haunt us in even the best of times with the suspicion that those early civilizations, so unlike our own, hold the key not only to the flowering of our recent past but also to a withered future.

Growth of human knowledge

There can be little doubt that immediate experience provides a firm foundation for the expectation of continued exponential growth. For example, we derive from human knowledge all our skills and abilities to turn the base matter of the world to our own interests. Knowledge grows with time; if we attempt to measure it---not by its essential quality, but by its quantity as manifested in reduction to printed form stored as books and journals in archival libraries---we find that knowledge, too, grows exponentially, apparently inexorably increasing by a fixed fraction year after year. Figure 1 exhibits the growth of the number of scientific journals with time --one typical measure of the growth of knowledge. The vertical axis scale is so arranged that exponential growth is represented by straight lines. The figure suggests that scientific knowledge has grown exponentially for more than 200 years, doubling its quantity every 15 years. If this pattern of growth persists for another two and one half decades, an addition of some 12% to the historic record represented by the figure, there will be in the year 2000 more than 1 million scientific journals publishing more than 25 million scientific articles each year. It has been calculated that each scientific article published today represents an investment of about $25,000; this cost will certainly not decrease in the future. Extrapolation of the historic trend of [link] therefore entails the conclusion that annual investment in scientific effort in the year 2000 will reach nearly one trillion dollars, which is approximately the 1973 gross national product of the United States. If the trend continues until 2050, the investment in science will rise to 10 trillion dollars annually. We do not suggest that these estimates are predictions; rather, they have been introduced to provide the reader with a yardstick with which to measure the encouraging projections of the technological optimists who argue that the increased application of novel technology will relax current constraints which manifest themselves in the form of continual shortages rotating from food to productive capacity to energy and back again to food. Newton has already combed the beach, found the smoother pebbles and prettier shells; we must explore his great ocean of truth and the price of the vessel in which we can do this must be paid. If continuance of exponential growth is to depend on technology, and ultimately on science, then the growth of technology and science must themselves continue on their exponential path, and then the projections provided above will, no matter that they boggle common sense, foreshadow reality.