Molecular biologist Sir C. B. Snow and engineer Buckminster Fuller warned that modern science must be reunited with the classical Greek humanities of the life sciences in order to prevent the destruction of civilization. The obstacle to this, they stressed, was an insufficient understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Fuller balanced this law with its synergistic biological energy drawn from the classical Greek worldview. The logic of fullerene fractals has now been used to establish a new science of life in defiance of the current view of a static world. Fuller considered that the incentive to avoid forgetting would be through the arts. It can be argued that the Western educational system is actually preventing the new balanced understanding of the Second Law, which Montessori referred to as the Law of the Energy of Greed, by employing a culture of fear, particularly in relation to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
First, the existence of a general culture of fear within the Australian educational system has become a common cognitive concept. In the lead-up to June 2010, allegations of organized greed within the education system regarding billions of dollars earmarked for the construction of school buildings were published by The Australian national newspaper, in the run-up to the sacking of the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, incessantly. On 30 June, front-page news reported that a $14m task force set up to investigate the problem was unlikely to hear complaints about the school stimulus program from 110 NSW principals. The investigation team was unable to offer principals ‘anonymity’ and so they were silenced by a ‘culture of fear’ emanating from the NSW Education Department.
Secondly, a more serious aspect of coercion within the Australian educational system was indicated in an article on higher education published by The Australian on 8 March 2006, titled ‘Guzzling Science’, written by Professor Julian Cribb, Editor of R&D REVIEW at the University of Technology Sydney. “Publish or die was the mantra by which a scholar lived or died. Today, according to a growing number of leading scholars in unpopular fields, Australian researchers can do both,” writes Professor Cribb. He defined “unpopular” as “any field of science that is liable to provide disturbing evidence of an established worldview espoused by governments, business, or vested interest lobbyists, or that is anonymous and unaccountable to research observers, stakeholders.” Professor Cribb explained how reprisals are implemented, noting that once it is applied, it is difficult in science to find another job that is not in a taxi.
The second complaint about a culture of fear within the Australian educational system is directly relevant to the second law of thermodynamics because this law completely governs the static worldview that controls university education in Australia. In 1996, the Australian government was charged in an open letter to the United Nations Secretariat with crimes against humanity because of this fact. A multi-year peer-reviewed investigation by the Millennium Project of the United Nations University, Australian Node, led to an official upholding of this complaint on 5 September 2006.
Spending $14 million in Australia to investigate allegations of general greed within the educational system is a paltry number compared to the tens of millions of pounds spent in England trying to discover new techniques from Sir Isaac Newton’s unpublished deeper physics principles to balance a mechanical description of the universe. Newton’s balanced view of the world was challenging the current fixed world view. Classifying the principles of balanced physics as a criminal fad by some people could be seen as part of a culture of fear that will not tolerate challenges to the existing fixed worldview, which is governed by what Montessori called the power law of greed.
The mounting troubling evidence supporting the many challenges to understanding the static world view of the second law of thermodynamics can be seen as an attempt to bridge Sir C.B. Snow’s widening cultural gap between modern determinism and the negative life sciences of classical Greek humanities. From the evidence presented in this article, we may consider Buckminster Fuller’s consideration justified, that it is up to the creative technical thinkers of the world to prevent
The unbalanced second law that led to the destruction of civilization.
Copyright (c) Robert Pope 2010