In Wisconsin, Leopold wrote the Odyssey, of "particle X." Beginning in the Paleozoic, X made many entrances and exits on the biotic scene, sometimes in living organisms, sometimes in decaying material:

      In the flash of a century the rock decayed, and X was pulled out and up into a world of living things. He helped build a flower, which became an acorn, which fattened a deer, which fed an Indian, all in a single year.

Leopold shamelessly anthropomorphized X, allowing it to feel "little chemical pushes," to "hope and fear," to share and help. This rhetorical license, though detracting from scientific accuracy, helped his popular appeal. Once we dispense with attributing consciousness to X, we find Leopold's truly remarkable talent for anticipating scientific developments yet to come.

      The Second Law of Thermodynamics has long told us that, in any closed system, entropy is always increasing; maximal disorder and heat death approach inexorably. But, classical thermodynamics dealt only with close-to- equilibrium systems, the behavior of which is predictable and degenerate; in such systems life cannot exist. In fact, classical thermodynamics cannot even explain the origination of orderly convection currents that arise when a bucket of water is set in a sunny window. As Nobel prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine put it: "If convection must be considered a 'miracle,' what then is there to say about life, with its highly specific features present in the simplest organisms?"

      It was already recognized that, as Leopold observed, "the trend of evolution is to elaborate and diversify the land biota" (The Land Pyramid). As early as 1924, Alfred Lotka considered evolution in terms of energy, and saw it displaying tendencies toward maximal energy flux. But it was not until the 1960s that the ecologist R. Margalef explained in detail how this general tendency increases organic complexity and biomass--through processes of natural selection that favor more energy-efficient elements and linkages. Individual organisms evolve to compose increasingly complex ecosystems that store energy, "hoarding sunlight."

      Classical thermodynamics did not address our everyday world of living things, where centers of order arise spontaneously out of disorder and chaos. Our world is maintained at "far-from-equilibrium" conditions by solar radiation. What complexity theorists like Prigogine and Stuart Kauffman have explained since the 1970s is how, in "dissipative structures" such as our planet earth, the laws of thermodynamics in fact lead spontaneously to order. Living organisms are temporary "islands of stability" that live and die subject to Darwinian processes of natural selection, storing energy along the way.

      Although the Second Law of Thermodynamics can never be repealed--all earthly evolution increases entropy at the grand level of the solar system--this process of hoarding sunlight reduces entropy locally, in the biosphere. Not only is potential energy stored in organic matter, but an increase in information content (complexity) also represents entropy reduction in the information theoretic analog of the second law. All that is living and interesting, then, is an operation to retard the ultimate inevitability of heat death, or (to borrow Dylan Thomas' immortal words), to "rage against the dying of the light." If we value life, therefore, the ethic is clear: act only so as to slow, and not hasten, entropy production at the biospheri c level. This is the meaning of maintaining "integrity, stability, and beauty."

      In his unpublished "1947 Foreword," Leopold acknowledged the importance of this saga of particle X; he had "been told that 'Odyssey' is a complete summary of the fundamentals of ecological conservation." Using the sea as metaphor for the ultimate sink (of maximal entropy), he ventured: "mice and men, soils and songs, might be merely ways to retard the march of atoms to the sea." The biotic community's "creatures must suck hard, live fast, and die often, lest its losses exceed its gains."

      Working out the logical consequences of these two great nineteenth century discoveries--thermodynamics and Darwinian evolution-- is an ongoing project. Thus far, few have described this story of life more poetically than Leopold.

      Alan G. McQuillan is professor of forest management, the University of Montana, where he conducts research on economic strategies for sustainable community development, and applications of post-structuralist epistemology to forest ecosystem management.

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