Confessions of a disillusioned scientist ➶

Just found Tom Murphy’s Do the Math blog, via a comment at Ongoing, and I like it a lot.

Tom’s path brings to mind Gia-Fu Feng’s and Jane English’s translation of and artwork in The Complete Tao Te Ching.

I became aware that some of the pillars on which modern life is based were necessarily temporary. Growth on a finite planet would have to stop—both in physical terms like energy, but also in economic terms.

Tom seems to me to be a sane and optimistic person, so it’s a good time to make a plan B, and C, and D, wherever you may be.

The last line of his 2021 textbook Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet:

Treat nature at least as well as we treat ourselves.

And as Jane English puts it:

Each of us can in this way bring a drop of balance and beauty to our world that so needs it. Many such drops can create a river and an ocean … We need to honor ancient wisdom as well as modern science and technology, the intangible and the measurable integrating them in both our minds and our hearts.

✶ Sunday, 12 January 2025


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