ABSTRACT
The inescapable loss of matter-energy potential that is the consequence of the Second Law is an especially devastating blow to human hubris. To approach the problem from a different direction, modern economic development is a drive to overcome existential limits by acquiring quasi-godlike powers and using them to create a terrestrial paradise of unlimited abundance. The abundance of biological life owes its shape, if not its very existence, to the effects of scarcity—that is, to the constraints imposed by natural law that make organic growth tend toward the optimum, the state that best reconciles all the limiting factors. Economic development is a struggle to create abundance in opposition to scarcity by using technological power to extend or even abolish natural limits. To recapitulate, the Enlightenment believed it had found a cure for the worst ills of traditional civilization: economic development via the technological conquest of nature.
