The Maximum Power Principle



Also see this post: Overshoot Loop and Evolution

Also see this post: How Intractable is Our Lack of Agency?

Also see this post: What is Wetiko?

Also see this video from Nate Hagens


The Maximum Power Principle is about who and what we (homo sapiens) are as a species. Most all species employ the MPP as a genetic and biological imperative. This page provides links to other reading material about the MPP.

Power is energy utilization for a purpose; proportional to forces x flows = work rate + entropy produced (Maximum Power and Maximum Entropy Production: Finalities in Nature, by S. N. Salthe, 2010). A surplus resource is stored power. Energy is a key aspect of overshoot because available energy is always limited by the energy required to utilize it.

Originally formulated by Lotka and further developed by Odum and Pinkerton, the MPP states that biological systems capture and use energy to build and maintain structures and gradients, which allow additional capture and utilization of energy. One of the great strengths of the MPP is that it directly relates energetics to fitness; organisms maximize fitness by maximizing power. With greater power, there is greater opportunity to allocate energy to reproduction and survival, and therefore, an organism that captures and utilizes more energy than another organism in a population will have a fitness advantage (The maximum power principle predicts the outcomes of two-species competition experiments, by John P. DeLong, 2008).

Jay Hanson and Dieoff.org





Update: A friend has revived Jay Hanson's site! Here's the new site.






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