## Metadata - Author: [[William Ophuls]] - Full Title: The Tragedy of Industrial Civilization - Category: #books ## Highlights - As Werner Heisenberg said of the scientific enterprise, “what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5213MYN&location=98)) - not only will no one see reality in quite the same way but that in fact no one actually sees reality. Hence it is said that we do not see things as they are but only as we are. ([Location 123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5213MYN&location=123)) - There is no free lunch. The Second Law operates like a tax system that imposes a cost on every matter-energy transformation—a cost that can be financial, ecological, or human. ([Location 258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5213MYN&location=258)) - Any future civilization must therefore be grounded on a respect for thermodynamic reality. Economic man has operated on the deluded assumption that natural resources are a kind of free good that can be extracted and consumed with impunity—not precious stocks and flows that must be accounted for not only financially, but also thermodynamically. ([Location 264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5213MYN&location=264)) - To put it in thermodynamic terms, nature’s tendency is to internalize costs and thereby wring a maximum of life from a minimum of energy, trapping it and using it over and over within a given ecosystem to produce biological wealth before it decays into dispersed, random heat as the Second Law ordains. ([Location 297](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5213MYN&location=297)) - there can be little doubt that intensive agriculture both requires protection and favors exploitation, which in turn necessitates a protective force and invites a regime that exploits, if only to pay the soldiers. ([Location 451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5213MYN&location=451))