Economics, Science, and Religion 4

[4]

The question of value enhancement through labor was inadvertently addressed by Rudolf Clausius, who in the time of 1850 - 1865 published his physical theories on the constantly evolving steam engine and its mechanical progeny.

Less well known publicly than Marx or Darwin, he studied the physical basis of heat or combustion engines and formulated after them the laws of heat mechanics, partly known as the first and second law of thermodynamics.

Above all, these stated that real "added value" could not be generated by such a machine.

[And, to be clear, man, as any animal, is one]

On the contrary:

The operation of a heat engine alone generates a physical, i. e. real, loss - and this relentlessly so; work always creates an inferior or subtracted value, as compared to the initial situation.

Every step along the way worsens the preconditions for the next; resources that cannot be replenished by work, after having undergone the work process, are physically worth less than before.

Always and everywhere.

On the one hand, the scientists involved in these studies recognized that their newly-discovered natural laws were valid throughout the universe; its very existence depended upon this being so. The physical balance of work performed was always negative, everywhere.

On the other hand, these laws seemed elusive in a way; they could not (to this day) be formulated definitively and unambiguously; this was especially true of the term entropy, which was introduced by Clausius in 1865, and which in further course was subject to several changes.

In the end, a mechanical invention of man had been examined for the physical basis of its profitability; the result was a law that was valid throughout the entire cosmos, stating that nothing comes from nothing.

Then where did it all come from, if not from God?

As it was clear now, no mechanical process, if only because of the previously "to be neglected" friction, was ever really reversible; thus it was unable to even sustain itself, let alone ever to yield a physical gain.

And, that should be emphasized here, life is such a process.

So, if this law applied to machines, then it applied to animals and humans as well, consciously or not; so similar were they in their requirements - and their performance.

Was Marx, along with the "capitalists", thus disproved?

And would this imply that all events in the universe were not only dynamic, but, due to their irreversibility, also directed in their dynamics? Or perhaps even purposive?

Once again, the question was raised of the closure of Creation.

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