Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems

Abstract

The topic of energy is in the news a lot these days. Not only are we concerned about having enough energy for today's civilization and tomorrow's needs, but also energy is at the core of our understanding of the inner workings of the Sun, Earth, and life itself. Indeed, energy may well be the most common currency in all of natural science, helping us to appreciate where we came from and guiding us toward a sustainable society in the future. Energy plays a vital role in the origin and evolution of all complex systems in the universe, including galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms. Treating each of these systems as open thermodynamic structures that acquire, store, and express energy, it can be shown that over billions of years since the Big Bang, the energy rate densities (watts per kilogram) of these systems have risen with the cosmic march of time. General, coherent worldviews, based largely on the concept of energy, are now being developed by many researchers around the world. I certainly share many of my colleagues' enthusiasm for the fundamental function of energy in our world and for the need to study it more.