On August 15th, Megan Dobrodt gave a presentation titled “The Anti-entropic Science of Vernadsky and LaRouche,” as the fourth in our Schiller Institute international youth class series. There were about 25 youth participants from the United States, Gambia, Mexico, Brazil, Uganda, Germany, France, Nigeria, Canada, and Liberia. The class examined the complementary scientific frameworks of biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and economist Lyndon LaRouche. Vernadsky demonstrated that Earth’s biosphere is inherently anti-entropic, evolving dynamically toward higher levels of organization, energy throughput, and cognitive thought, culminating in the noosphere where human technology acts as the planet’s dominant shaping force. Building directly upon this physical science, LaRouche defined true economics not as monetary finance or the management of scarcity, but as the study of humanity’s anti-entropic progress. He argued that human creative thought allows society to produce a physical surplus—or “free energy”—beyond the costs of production, driving population growth and continuous advancements in science and art.
The class was followed by a lively Q&A session. The first questioner asked about the apparent contradiction between rising capital costs for modern technology (such as advanced machinery) and how LaRouche disproved Karl Marx’s theory that the rate of profit inherently declines as capital investment increases. Another questioner asked how creative arts and musicians fit into the definition of economic value and creativity. A question from Uganda focused on the role of young people in Uganda in utilizing physical economic principles to rapidly develop the nation, despite the current political environment undermining such potential.
