
A visual of the 1970 AAAS Symposium on Science and Human Values, with talks and commentary by: Ralph Burhoe, Aharon Katchalsky, Bruce Lindsay and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, focused on "human values in the context of thermodynamics".

A visual of the 1970 AAAS Symposium on Science and Human Values, with talks and commentary by: Ralph Burhoe, Aharon Katchalsky, Bruce Lindsay and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, focused on "human values in the context of thermodynamics".

In conferences, Symposium on Science and Human Values was a 29 Dec 1970 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), focused on “human values in the context of thermodynamics” (Ѻ), held in Chicago, which had five presenters, including Ralph Burhoe, founding editor of Zygon, Aharon Katchalsky, and Bruce Lindsay, along with four commentators, including: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Overview
On 29 Dec 1970, the annual meeting (Ѻ) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was held at Chicago, Illinois, described as a Symposium on Science and Human Values, held under the auspices of the Section of the History and Philosophy, sponsored by the Alfred Sloan Foundation (Ѻ), chaired by theologian and meteorologist Ralph Burhoe (1911-1997) (Ѻ), wherein presentations were made by: Aharon Katchalsky, Bruce Lindsay, biochemist and oncologist Van Potter (1911-2001) (Ѻ), anthropologist Anthony Wallace (1923-2015) (Ѻ), with commentaries by biomedical scientist John W. Mehl, Barry B. Edelstein, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William C. Wimsatt, and Paul A. Weiss.

Committee members included: Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Jacob Bronowski, whose 1956 Science and Human Values, the conference was named after, was in attendance.

The core minds of the conference where Katchalsky and Lindsay. Katchalsky's presentation, however, was weak, amounting to an attempt to spin Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structures theory, mixed with other related melting pot theories, e.g. Zhabotinsky reaction, Alan Turing's chemical morphogenesis, his own work on clay substrate theory origin of life, etc., to loosely argue for some general unstated idea, without actually touching on "human values" in any sense of the manner. Lindsay mostly rambled on to conclude with a restatement of how his version of the thermodynamic imperative should be the new golden rule.

Influence
The Dec 1970 symposium would seem to have influenced, in a goad sense, the Mar 1971 Priestly Medal Address “Chemical Thermodynamics in the Real World” by Frederick Rossini, who was notified of his award in Jun 1970, and did influence the 1971 “The Thermodynamics of War”, by Melvin Klegerman and Hugh McDonald, both the symposium and Rossini’s article being cited in the latter, in a platform sense. [1]

Quotes | Employed
The following are quotes employed by symposium participants:

“Science provides only a car and a chauffeur for us. It cannot, as science, tell us where to drive.”
— Clyde Kluckhohn (c.1958), “Scientific Study of Values and Contemporary Civilization”, told to American Philosophical Society; cited by Ralph Burhoe (pg. 82)

“Enthusiastic but poorly informed physical scientists have lately tried very hard to squeeze all of biology into the straight jacket of a reductionist physical-chemical explanation.”
— Ernst Mayr (1969), "Scientific Explanation and Conceptual Framework"; comment on Hugo de Vries and the "Reception of Mutation Theory"; cited by Aharon Katchalsky (pg. 101); cited by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pg. 163)

Quotes | From
The following are quotes from the symposium made by participants:

“For several decades, the search for adequate foundations on which a moral system could be constructed was directed toward the physical sciences. The assumption underlying these efforts was that the laws of physics represent the ‘foundations of nature’, and if—and what a huge if—human ethics should conform to natural requirements, then a set of weighty commandments could evolve from this study. Some of the better-known consequences of these considerations are the fine study of Bronowski [Science and Human Values, 1953] on the moral foundations of the whole structure of science and the famous attempt of Niels Bohr [Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, 1958] to show that the principle of complementarity of atomic physics suffices for a new approach to human understanding and may serve as a basis for international complementary relations between contradictory cultures.”
— Aharon Katchalsky (1970), “Thermodynamics of Flow and Biological Organization” (pg. 100)

“The prime position in the interpretation of human experience of the concept of energy, the most important idea in the whole of science. Representing in its simplest form the notion of constancy in the midst of change, it has come to pervade all aspects of life. There is nothing in our experience which cannot ultimately be described in terms of the transfer of energy from one place to another and for the transformation of energy from one form to another.”
— Bruce Lindsay (1970), “The Larger Cybernetics” (pg. 127)

“Thermodynamics is the greatest physical theory ever concocted by the mind of man. There seems to be no reason to doubt that not only is the physical behavior of human beings describable in terms of energy, but that the same is true of mental and emotional behavior commonly ascribed to the nervous system.”
— Bruce Lindsay (1970), “The Larger Cybernetics” (pg. 128)

“The second law conveys, to me, the distinct suggestion that we as individuals should endeavor to consume as much entropy as possible to increase the order in our environment. This is the thermodynamic imperative, possibly not unworthy to rank alongside the categorical imperative of Kant or even the golden rule.”
— Bruce Lindsay (1970), “The Larger Cybernetics” (pg. 134)

Quotes | On
The following are quotes on the symposium:

“The Symposium on Science and Human Values at the 1970 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was largely devoted to the application of thermodynamics to social phenomena.”
— Melvin Klegerman (1976), “The Thermodynamics of War” [1]

References
1. Klegerman, Melvin E. and McDonald, Hugh J. (1976). “The Thermodynamics of War” (Ѻ), American Laboratory, 8:61-73.

Further reading
● Burhoe, Ralph W. (1971). “Introduction to the Symposium on Science and Human Values” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):82-98, Jun.
● Katchalsky, Aharon. (1971). “Thermodynamics of Flow and Biological Organization” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):99-125.
● Lindsay, Bruce. (1971). “The Larger Cybernetics” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):126-34.
● Mehl, John W. (1971). “Life, Thermodynamics, Creativity, and Pollution” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):157-59.
● Edelstein, Barry B. (1971). “Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Biology” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):160-62.
● Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1971). “From Thermodynamics to Values: a Transition Yet to be Accomplished” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):163-67.

See also
● Whewell-Coleridge debate | 1833 BAAS meeting
● Tyndall-Stewart-Tait debate | 1874 BAAS meeting

External links
● Overview – Zygon, Volume 6, Issue 2.