Energetics of Evolution
Boltzmann's views played an essential role in the development of energetics, the scientific study of energy flows under transformation. In 1922, for example, Alfred J. Lotka referred to Boltzmann as one of the first proponents of the proposition that available energy can be understood as the fundamental object under contention in the biological, or life-struggle and therefore also in the evolution of the organic world. Lotka interpreted Boltzmann's view to imply that available energy could be the central concept that unified physics and biology as a quantitative physical principle of evolution. In the foreword to Boltzmann's Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, S.R. de Groot noted that
| “ | Boltzmann had a tremendous admiration for Darwin and he wished to extend Darwinism from biological to cultural evolution. In fact he considered biological and cultural evolution as one and the same things. ... In short, cultural evolution was a physical process taking place in the brain. Boltzmann included ethics in the ideas which developed in this fashion ... | ” |
Howard T. Odum later sought to develop these views when looking at the evolution of ecological systems, and suggested that the maximum power principle was an example of Darwin's law of natural selection.
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