Mission Statement

The mission of the Emergy Society is to work toward the general acceptance and
broad application of the concepts of emergy and transformity for decision-making
in the world. To this end we will promote the exchange of information on research
related to emergy and take other actions that may facilitate the advancement of
knowledge and understanding about emergy and transformity within human minds.
 


Statement of the Need for the Emergy Society

Emergy and transformity are fundamental quantities of non-equilibrium thermodynamics
that are derived from the 5th law of thermodynamics, otherwise know as the law of energy
hierarchy (Odum 1996). The fifth law, in turn, follows from the fourth law or the
maximum empower principle (Lotka 1922, Odum 1996). A progressive movement toward
maximizing empower (emergy per unit time) was proposed by Odum (1996) as the
decision criterion that guides the evolution of all systems. These ideas arose within the
general framework of Energy Systems Theory (Odum 1994) and they have recently been
placed on the strong mathematical footing (Giannantoni 2000) necessary for a general
physical theory to be valid and widely accepted. The power of energy systems thinking, in
general, and the ideas of emergy and transformity, in particular, to increase our
understanding of natural and social systems on all scales of hierarchical organization and to
improve decision-making for society by employing a comprehensive, integrating criterion
to establish equivalences among disparate quantities provide indispensable tools that will
allow society to address the complex problems facing the world today. However, these
ideas are not yet generally known or understood by many people in the global scientific
community and in the world at-large.


References:

Giannantoni, C., 2000. The Maximum Em-power Principle as the basis for
Thermodynamics of Quality.  SG Editoriali, Padova, Italy. 185 pp.

Lotka, A.J., 1922. Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proceedings, National.
Academy of Science.  8: p. 147 - 151.

Odum, H.T. 1994. Ecological and General Systems. University Press of Colorado,
Boulder, CO.

Odum, H.T., 1996. Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision
Making. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 370 pp.
Mission of the Society and Statement of Need
International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research
(ISAER)


The Emergy Society