Odum, Howard Washington

Odum, Howard Washington, 1884-1954, American sociologist, b. Bethlehem, Ga., grad. Emory College, 1904, Ph.D. Clark Univ., 1909, and Ph.D. Columbia, 1910. In 1920 he became professor of sociology at the Univ. of North Carolina and was director of its school of public welfare (1920-32) and of its Institute for Research in Social Science (1924-44). A member of the North Carolina state planning board after 1935, he also served on many other state and regional committees. His most important work was Southern Regions of the United States (1936), a highly influential study on regional and racial sociology. He also contributed to the study of folk music. Odum wrote a trilogy of novels on the life of a wandering black person: Rainbow round My Shoulder (1928), Wings on My Feet (1929), and Cold Blue Moon (1931).

(born May 24, 1884, near Bethlehem, Ga., U.S.—died Nov. 8, 1954, Chapel Hill, N.C.) U.S. sociologist. In 1920 Odum joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, where he established its departments of sociology and public welfare and founded the journal Social Forces (1922). His scholarly focus was folk sociology, particularly of Southern blacks, for whom he urged equal opportunity. His books include Southern Regions of the United States (1936) and American Regionalism (1938, with Harry Moore).

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Dr David M. Scienceman is an Australian scientist; he changed his name from David Slade by deed poll in 1972.

Dr Scienceman has a mathematics and physics degree and gained his PhD from the chemical engineering department at Sydney University (Australia) on a scholarship from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (Cadzow 1984). He is the author of the emergy nomenclature, and associated concept of Emergy Synthesis.

"Scienceman"

J.McGhee (1990) wrote that the change of name from David Slade to David Scienceman was an experiment to create a movement of scientifically-aware politicians. In a world dominated by scientific achievements and problems, the then Dr. Slade believed that there should be a political party that represented the scientific point of view (Cadzow 1984). He envisaged a Scientific Party, where the members would be required to have mastery of one easily available, readable and comprehensible book of general science (ibid). People who did so would need an identifying title, and so the then Dr. Slade proposed the title of "Scienceman", and changed his name accordingly in an experiment to familiarise people with the name, and to gauge its popular appeal.

Sciencemate

At a meeting of the World Future Society in 1976, a group of American feminists told him his new name was unbearably sexist. He saw their point and decided that a better title for members of the Scientific Party would be "Sciencemate" (Cadzow 1984).

The sciencemate book

The book that Dr. Scienceman preferred was Environment, Power and Society by the 'father' of ecosystems ecology, Professor Howard T. Odum (1972 Wiley InterScience). Environment, Power and Society was dedicated to H.T.Odum's father Howard Washington Odum, an American sociologist and technocrat who, "suggested a synthesis of science and society" (1972, p.viii). It looks at humanity from the point of view of energy systems analysis, and systems ecology. In a 1984 interview with Dr. Scienceman, Jane Cadzow wrote in the Australian newspaper that Dr. Scienceman was totally converted to H.T.Odum's idea that everything is based on energy. As H.T.Odum wrote, "Power is a common denominator to all processes and materials" (1972, p.21). For Cadzow

Dr. Scienceman believes it is possible to measure anything, even money, in terms of its embodied energy. "To operate a supply of banknotes you've got to have a very large commercial organisation. You've got to have banks, you've got to have printing houses. They themselves consume a large amount of energy". By comparing the money flow with the energy flow, which has been broken down to mathematical units, "we can say that a dollar is equivalent to so many units of embodied energy."(The Australian 1984, p. 7)

This is to say that political parties, policies, biological and ecological systems can all have kilowatt ratings just like a home electric appliance. From this point of view the best way to understand a country's economic system is to trace, then measure the flow of energy around it. In H.T.Odum's words,

Although nearly everyone is familiar with power ratings of household appliances and automobiles, our educational system has rarely emphasized that the affairs of man also have quantitative power ratings and that the important issue of man's existence and survival are fully regulated by the laws of energetics as are the machines. It is possible to put calories-per-day values on human institutions, on the flows of energy in cities, on the power requirements and delivery of activities of nations, or on the relative influences exerted by man and his environmental systems. (1972, pp. 26-27)

Author of emergy nomenclature

In various, sometimes difficult to obtain, publications Scienceman claimed to be the author of the emergy nomenclature. For example Scienceman began a letter to the editor of the ecological engineering journal (1997, p.209):

I write as the author of the nomenclature 'emergy, empower, emdollar, embit, energy memory and the maximum empower principle'...

Writing in response to this letter H.T.Odum (1997, p.215) wrote:

As a visiting scholar from Australia to the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida, Dr Scienceman contributed in major ways to the concepts and application of emergy evaluation off and on over a 10 year period. ... As a library scholar without equal, David researched the basis for scientific nomenclature and linguistic roots.

References

• J.Cadzow (1984) Dr Scienceman's brave new word, The Australian, Newspaper Article, Tuesday, May 15, p. 7.
• H.T.Odum (1997) Letter to the Editor: Emergy terminology. Ecol. Engr. 9: 215-216.
• J.McGhee (1990), Super Scienceman, Extract from the Edinburgh EVENING NEWS, Scotland, April 06, p.1.
• D.M.Scienceman (1987) Energy and Emergy. In G. Pillet and T. Murota (eds), Environmental Economics: The Analysis of a Major Interface. Geneva: R. Leimgruber. pp. 257-276. (CFW-86-26)
• D.M. Scienceman (1989) 'The Emergence of Emonomics'. In Proceedings of The International Society for General Systems Research Conference (July 2-7, 1989), Edinburgh, Scotland, 7 pp. (CFW-89-02).
• D.M. Scienceman (1991) Emergy and Energy: The Form and Content of Ergon. Discussion paper. Gainesville: Center for Wetlands, University of Florida. 13 pp. (CFW-91-10)
• D.M.Scienceman (1995), The Emergy Synthesis of Religion and Science, Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida. 13pp.
• D.M. Scienceman (1997) Letters to the Editor: Emergy definition, Ecological Engineering, 9, pp. 209-212.
• D.M. Scienceman and B.M. El-Youssef (1993) The System of Emergy Units, in Packham, R. ed. Ethical management of science as a system, International Society for the Systems Sciences, proceedings of the thirty-seventh annual meeting, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, July 5-9, pp 214-223.
• D.M. Scienceman and F.Ledoux (2000) Sublimation, in M.T.Brown (ed.) Emergy Synthesis:Theory and Applications of the Emergy Methodology, Proceedings of the 1st Biennial Emergy Analysis Research Conference, Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, pp. 317-321.