User:Sholto Maud
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Hello,
Welcome to my Wikipedia User page.
I am from Australia, and currently on holidays after working with RMIT University on a year long research project into Water Savings in the food manufacturing industry.
I have an interest in, and experience with environmental evaluation and auditing methodologies together with interests in the systems and engineering sciences, and the history and philosophy of such. I'm taking a break from Wikipedia at the moment but hope to contribute in the future when the opportunity arises.
Thank you for visiting.
Kind Regards.
Sholto.
Why I have contributed to Wikipedia I noticed that the entry on embodied energy was small & incomplete, talked about the concept of "emergy", and had my CSIRO article as a reference. On that basis I thought I would contribute what I know about embodied energy and the emergy synthesis paradigm & nomenclature.
Emergy With respects to the emergy concept and nomenclature, my personal view is that they are emergent methodologies in the realm of what might be described as protoscience. Whether or not the methodology can, or will be formally classified as a science is currently not clear.
Although the theory and associated discourse is of some interest, I do not endorse them. I seek clarification, explanation and demonstration of the principles. To my knowledge this has not be done to date.
Background: I have researched systems ecology and embodied energy independently for about 10 years using a small inheritance from my father's death in 1997. I have found it a difficult area to study because it involves technical expertise in many areas of science (e.g., cybernetics, systems theory, ecology, electronics, etc.), economics and society. Adding to the difficulty was that a lot of the literature is not available here in Australia, even at our best Universities. Moreover many people in this field are self taught, so there are few formally recognized courses or curricula available in Australia. In fact I am not aware of any.
Motivation: Some people, including the permaculturealist David Holmgren, reckon that the emergy concept and associated methodologies are important for ensuring the sustainability and prosperous survival of humans on earth (and other planets if we get there). It has also been suggested by Odum and Odum (2001) that the emergy evaluation methods will be appropriate for constructing government policy in a time of peak and post-peak energy resource production.
These claim motivated my studies of the area. After 10 years of study I am not sure and seek a convincing demonstration.
Wikipedia strategy: My strategy was to initiate Wikipedia entries relevant to the embodied energy, emergy and systems ecology paradigms, and then fill them out as time permitted. However this 'scattergun' approach of multiple articles, in hindsight, was probably ill fated - load resistance too high to maintain maximum power!!. Wikipedia has been a good learning medium in this regard.
Wikipedia and my philosophy: I believe that we can interpret Wikipedia as an on-going instantiation of Leibniz's 1700's encyclopedic project. I am attracted to the idea that by contributing to Wikipedia we are in some ways fulfilling Leibniz's vision.
[edit] My contributions to Wiki
I initiated the following articles: Emergy, Energy quality, Emergy Synthesis, Systems ecology, Energy Systems Language, Ecological humanities, Characteristica universalis, Maximum power, Energetics, Ecological energetics, Biophysical economics,
and have made contributions to these articles among others: Leibniz, Ludwig_Boltzmann#Energetics_of_evolution, Calculus ratiocinator, Universal language, Embodied energy, Maximum power theorem, Zeroth law of thermodynamics, Permaculture, Ecosystems, Sustainability, Metaphysics of quality
