William Frederick Cottrell (1903-1979), an American sociologist, developed a general theory of social and economic change based on changes in energy sources and their conversion technologies. In Energy and Society (1955), Cottrell describes the evolution of human culture in terms of energy.
Transforming Power:
Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict
by John Byrne
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Chapter 1: Energy & Society
This article is a revision of my original work published in 1955, and is designed to re-examine the proposition “The energy available to man limits what he can do, and influences what he will do.” Much of what I said a quarter of a century ago does not need to be changed. However, of course things have happened that require an update. Those familiar with the first edition may want to skip the unchanged material, but it had to be included for the benefit of those who have never read the 1955 edition.
The oil embargo of the 1970s and the corresponding enormous increase in the price of fuel impressed many people with the significance of energy in our lives. Nevertheless, the great majority of them regard what has been going on as a temporary aberration. Given the right incentives or the proper action by government, the problem will go away. What we are experiencing is a political, economic or technological problem. Certainly if we can put a man on the moon we can deal with the “energy crisis.”
The fact that basic science demonstrates that we have entered on a new phase of our relations with nature is blithely denied. To accept the idea that man is limited by “the material world” goes against the idealists assertion that man is either completely free to work out his own salvation, or he is controlled, thus absolved of all his responsibility for what happens.
Energy is regarded as being a part of the material world so it can have no influence on values that are ultimately matters of the spirit. Therefore, the idea that it can influence what man will do violates very deep-seated truths “we hold to be self-evident.”
Scientists, for their part tended to give ultimate sanction to the generalizations they have made from empirical evidence. Anything that seemed to contradict the conclusions they had made at a particular time was classified as superstition, or other form of dangerous error. The law of cause and effect superseded divine purpose as the ultimate sanction. Cause was ultimately reduced to the continuing consequences of the collision of atoms. Eminent scientists held that the idea that human though, purpose or evaluation was a variable which was independent of what was physically determined was an illusion that would be destroyed as man learned more through the use of the scientific method. For them there appeared to be no possible way to avoid the consequences of the physical events that must inevitably follow one another. Physical determinism reigned supreme among many of the most advanced scientists.
Over time as science itself advanced, the simple conception of cause became less and less useful. The new realization came to be that all that we do through scientific research is increase the accuracy with which we can predict the probable results of introducing new variables into a real or simulated set of conditions. This permitted the analysis of many situations where a great many variables operated, some directly found in nature, some of which had their origin in culture, some in unique human experience. A great many of these influencing factors owed their discovery to newly developing technology and science itself. With the use of new concepts, new models, new experimental apparatus, what had been though to be ultimately determined by the nature of fixed physical structures was shown to result from interaction between a whole series of “forces.”
Therefore, scientists generally have come to recognize that they, no more than ecclesiasts, have been dealing with “ultimate truth.” But this position has threatened basic beliefs about “free will” as much as had the set of absolutes the scientists once espoused.
So, there continues to be a struggle between ancient beliefs and new discoveries made by scientists. I am not attempting in this series of articles to resolve it. I do not deny, I affirm, that the outcome of the interaction between energy and other factors operating at any place and time is only predictable when these other factors are known. But I also insist that ignorance about various aspects of the energy involved in a situation reduces the accuracy with which the probable future can be learned. Put another way, I am not trying to show how physical force is always the ultimate determinant of anything. However, in some situations the demonstration that the energy necessary to do some things is not available may make it useless for us to analyze what other things might have affected the outcome if the needed energy was available. Sometimes then, we can say positively some things cannot happen and thus avoid expensive error involved in trying to do the impossible. The first question to be answered is, then:
Does energy set limits?
In our day-to-day experience, we find ample reason to accept the idea that what we can do is limited. There are many things we would like to do but cannot. We have a pretty good idea of how much we can lift, how far we can run and how fast, how long we can work at a given pace, and so on. Therefore, while we may not know exactly what the limits on our conduct are, we do know very well that there are some. If it is important to know just what we can do, we can use various kinds of tests that will pinpoint for us some of the limits. Nevertheless, some tests will show that many of them are not physical.
We know that there are things that we are physically capable of doing that we just cannot do. These same limits may be characteristic of almost everybody we know. We can say that this happens because we have been taught limits sanctioned by our common culture, or because the constraints established by government or others whose control over us forces us to comply with them. Sometimes, however, the limits result from our having personally had specific unique experiences that forever thereafter limit our behavior but do not affect other people the same way. Some derive from physiological trauma such as are produced by disease or accident. Some derive from psychological experiences. We may or may not know just what they were.
So it is hard to know how many of the limits we live within are a result of insufficient energy and how many are not. If in some special circumstances, such as an accident, somebody does something nobody thought he could do, like lifting an automobile that is pinning down a passenger, we are apt to think that he has transcended the physical limits of his body. We may say, “This shows that you can do anything if you want to badly enough.” But, there is no record of any one man lifting a locomotive, even to save the life of a loved one. Therefore, it is often difficult or impossible to prove that in a particular situation insufficient energy is or is not the limiting factor.
Until very recently little effort was made to analyze social situations in terms of the energy changes involved. This results from aspects of Western culture that I just pointed out. In most cases where the concept “energy” has been used it has been classified with technology and material things. On the other hand, human behavior is said to be largely controlled by “the mind.” Such human characteristics as can be measured by instruments that are used by the natural sciences (like thermometers) were classed as functions of “the body.” This dichotomy – mind/body – runs as a major part of the way we think.
So since choice is said to be a function of the mind there is great resistance to the idea that material things do affect human choice. We disregard or deny any analysis of cause that gives priority, in terms of time or in terms of significance, to “material things.”
However, as I just mentioned, in hard sciences “cause” was regarded as being a physical phenomenon. Everything could ultimately be reduced to tiny atoms that collided with one another, with predictable consequences. There was no room for influence by mind or choice. The amount of matter in the universe was constant; it could not be increased or decreased. Moreover, the same was true of energy. Of course, almost everybody knows that these axioms are not absolutes. Matter can become energy, and the reverse. And energy can be demonstrated to be involved in all human processes, including thinking, dreaming, creating, worshipping and all the other “higher” elements of human behavior. The dichotomy that seemed to be forced on us by nature is now seen to be instead a product of human thought.
What we now see is that all the elements of nature interact. Ecological sciences hold that changes in such things as climate, soil, mineralization and other physical and chemical factors result in changing systems among plants and animals, including man.