Geology Reference
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and as one knows he died in 1994. Jacques Grinevald protested bitterly when his
death went largely unnoticed. I was in the U.S. when he died and I must say that
the New York Times wrote a brief review. It was not quite what he deserved but
it was with time that his statue grew. He had after all been one of the greatest
thinkers of the 20th century.
The interview did not pretend to be one of a journalist's standard. It was only for
my exclusive and personal use. I was interested to know his opinion on some of
the themes which made me restless, such as the consequence of my own theory's
development. And for this it served. I have not rewritten here everything we spoke
about, above all of those vital experiences that he had had in visiting Spain and
Latin America. Yet I do publish his opinion on his thought and that which is the
most important. They could well have been some of his last ever words on the
subject.
Forever Prof. Georgescu-Roegen.
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was born in Constanza, Romania, in 1906. He tells
us that despite his second name, which was Romanised, he has Greek roots.
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: When my father was born in the nineteenth cen-
tury (1850) when he was over there, there was a special kind of arrangement. Family
names at that time did not exist in Romania. People were named according to where
they were from; the upper classes had the names of the places where they had their
fields. The other case was almost like that of the Jews. The Romans had a family
name. The Ancient Greeks didn't. It was something like that. My grandfather's
name was Athanasius, but his first name was George. And when my father went
to school he had to be listed in the register and so the teacher asked him- “What's
your name?” and he said “Stavros”. “Yes, but what's your family name?” and he
said “I don't know what that is.” -Well, what's your father's name, then?. “George”
-“Very well, then, you're Georgescu!”- a romanisation. So that was how it was. I
should have been Nicholas Athanasius, because I'm half Greek, but it isn't -and
that's why.
Antonio Valero: You have always encouraged the study of the Ancient Greeks as
a way of reflecting on our modern society. Do you believe that Greek thinking has
determined our way of thinking, of understanding our present society?
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: You know, the British think (and also our Amer-
ican colleagues) bigger and bigger. But if the Greeks had not made us think about
the cause, the “proximate cause”, the First Cause, we would still be in the same
situation as the Indians or the Chinese. Either contemplative, like the Indians, or
simply registering facts without asking why. That's why they invented the compass.
Aristotle talks of four types of cause. All of them explain what a thing is, what it
is intended for, how it was made, why it was made. I believe the Greeks have given
us this view of the world so we can not nowadays ask one single question which has
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