Thermodynamics 2.0 Program: Sessions and Abstracts
Mon - Wed, June 22 - June 24 , 2020 , Massachusetts, USA
Session T07: Dynamics of Living Systems
10:45-11:45. Tuesday June 23, 2020
Chair: Alec Groysman
Title: Thermodynamics, Economic Evolution and Growth of Information: The Perspective of Peircian Semiotics
Presenter:
- Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
(Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University, Germany )
Bio-sketch
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath (*1959) is Professor and Permanent Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, China. After completing education in economics and sinology at the University of Cologne, between 1992 and 2016 he assumed professorships and chairs in economics, evolutionary/institutional economics and Chinese economic studies at Duisburg University, Witten/Herdecke University and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. As a visiting professor, he taught at University of Vienna, University of Bonn, Hochschule St. Gallen, University of Tübingen, Tsinghua University Schwarzman College, and many others. His major fields of research are economics and philosophy, institutional change and economic development, international economics and Chinese economic studies. His publications include 500+ academic papers and 16 books, covering a broad cross-disciplinary range in economics, the humanities and the sciences, including recently: Journal of Economic Methodology, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Economics & Philosophy, European Economic Review, Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, European Journal of Political Economy, Ecological Economics and Entropy. Written in German, his new book ‘Fundamentals of Critical Economics’ (2018) develops a conceptual framework for a comprehensive disciplinary transformation of the field, which builds on previous work, especially ‘Foundations of Economic Evolution: A Treatise on the Natural Philosophy of Economics’ (Elgar, 2013).
Author(s):
- Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
(Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University, Germany )
Abstract:T07.W150
Abstract
Relating thermodynamics and human economy has been mainly achieved in the context of explaining economic growth, in two senses: analysing thermodynamic constraints on growth and investigating the role of energy in driving growth. This approach ignores the core feature of growth, which is the generation and accumulation of information (aka knowledge). The possible role of thermodynamics in linking the concepts of energy and information in economics remains neglected. One reason is that the existing physical concepts of information are mostly informed by the Shannon view, which leaves aside the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of information. I argue that a synthesis of thermodynamics and economics must build on a new approach to the physics of information, and I suggest that this can be achieved by semiotics as framed in the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce.
One field that has already contributed substantially to this project is modern biosemiotics, such as in Stanley Salthe’s numerous contributions. I elaborated these contributions in my 2013 book ‘Foundations of Economic Evolution: A Treatise on the Natural Philosophy of Economics’. Rethinking causality is pivotal in this endeavour, especially with reference to final causality in evolutionary processes, as Terence Deacon has also argued forcefully. Integrating physics and economics via thermodynamics is impossible without eschewing common exclusive notions of efficient causality. If final causality is recognized as a physical concept, it is straightforward to approach the growth of information as an embodied form of inference mediated by semiosis, along Peircian lines. The modern correspondence in thermodynamics is the Maximum Entropy hypothesis which is employed both as a formalism of inference and as a physical mechanism of energy dissipation. I present a conceptual frame and apply this on a central concept that bridges engineering and economics in technological evolution, ‘design’.
Keywords: semiotics, information, knowledge, design, economic evolution