AgPhysics

About Hugh Lovel – Biodynamic Farmer and AgPhysics Adviser

Hugh Lovel, with a background in maths, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology, applies science to the subject of biodynamic agriculture, demystifying it and rescuing it from a cultish past. Hugh has more than three decades farming experience in all areas of agriculture, from market gardening to grazing and dairy. His presentation incorporates a slide show of memorable beauty, while he loves to answer questions and solve problems. From his point of view, “It is utter bunk and wicked propaganda to say we must use chemistry to feed the world. Chemistry routinely fails to deliver adequate, healthy nutrition to the world’s billions. If it were applied everywhere as best practice, biodynamic agriculture could do this.

What is AgPhysics and what is it about?

Holistic Science

AgPhysics is a concept and a website devoted to holistic science–holistic
because it deals with everything as though anything, whatever its nature,
was one and synchronous with everything else; and science, which here is
defined as the art of knowing. Many define science as the pursuit of
knowledge, as though such an elusive thing could be fixed to a specimen
board. I do not conceive that science is static any more than I believe a
beetle glued in a specimen case is an actual beetle. I believe knowledge is
only a corpse from which the dynamic principle is missing, and that actual
science is fluid and evolving–thus, knowing.

The Domain

The domain of AgPhysics is goodness, truth and beauty. Many scientists would
have it that science has nothing whatsoever to do with either goodness or
beauty; and yet, how can science be separated from either? Is there some
universal principle that prohibits knowing goodness or beauty? Bah, humbug!
Moreover, if goodness, truth and beauty are comparative, then evil,
deception and ugliness must also be dealt with here.

The Logo

Originally when the term AgPhysics was conceived I was up very late browsing
the web, soaring in abstract thought. While I am not much the sort of
mathematician that crunches numbers, I am very much the sort that deals with
overarching concepts. I’ve spent the last 35 years of my life farming or
involved in farm research and teaching, and I’ve gone the other direction
from trying to define organisms by what they contain. I see them, one and
all, as a product of their surroundings. Everything I see is a product of
its surroundings. After all, is not what I see the light reflected from the
surfaces rather than their contents? If we plot the overarching wave
function of those photons, the function that I believe best describes this
is the hyperbolic tangent, which incidentally, to those not versed in maths,
this is a transcendental function. So what the bleep does that mean? I
believe it means that everything that we see comes from and leads to an
unknowable and unguessable void that transcends all that is finite or
physical. For the moment I will leave Cantor’s orders of infinities aside
and just hold onto the thought of transcendence as though I held a comet by
its tail. The logo picture is an abstract mathematically generated image I
found that night browsing Google images. Fortunately I downloaded it as I
haven’t seemed able to find it again. But actually the whole point of this
is I don’t see any reason that any image whatsoever could not be generated
via the hyperbolic tangent function, depending on the variables. Here is
another that I found while browsing in an effort to find the one in the
AgPhysics Logo. It is much more beautiful.

The Who

I, the generator of AgPhysics, am Hugh Lovel, born Kirkland, Washington at
8:10 p.m. the 30th of June, 1947, left high school at 15 and entered college
(university) at 16. I studied business with sort of a notion of becoming a
tycoon. After becoming thoroughly disillusioned with business I changed
majors thinking to become a priest. Then I joined the U.S. Air Force,
thinking perhaps to become a hero, or else dead. Keep in mind this was
during the Vietnam War and I was deeply disillusioned. The Air Force
succeeded in producing even deeper disillusionment for me, and upon my
discharge a couple years further down the military track I kicked about and
finally made up my mind to study biochemistry because I was hopeful it would
help me solve the riddle of what this business of life was. Surely there was
a chemistry of thought, of emotion, of activity, and I wanted to find out
about it. At first I didn’t do well, as my scientific background went no
further than science fiction. I began with remedial maths for no credit and
started out failing them because I couldn’t seem to memorize that sort of
stuff. I had to grasp it. So I dived into maths, physics, chemistry and
biology courses like a decathlon runner trying to catch his breath. I ended
up winning a departmental scholarship, only to find–once again–that I was
even more deeply disillusioned. We weren’t studying anything that was ALIVE.
I dropped out, worked, encountered drugs, took LSD and found at least that I
and the world around me was more alive than I’d thought. That was actually a
big, thankful relief. It took a couple years, but I ended up studying
psychology with one of the most creative minds in the business, Jack Horner,
may he reside in heaven–which I imagine to be more joyously alive than here
on earth. I don’t imagine heaven is at all peaceful–quite the contrary.
After studying and working with Jack and his colleagues I conceived the idea
of farming in order to find out how to grow food of extraordinary
character–unlike the pap filling the shelves in the supermarkets. You see,
I imagined there was a grain or so of truth to the adage that we are what we
eat. 35 years later I go in the supermarket and see volumes of mediocrity
and toxicity. I come out and I see much the same. As within, so without. I
think I’m really onto something with this business of growing food of the
highest quality.
It is a logical progression from business, sociology, military, work, maths,
physics, chemistry, biology and psychology, and we should see future
articles on all these topics on this site. But most of all we will see
articles on food of the highest quality–what is it, how to grow it, how to
prepare it and what does it mean. But it won’t just be food, it will also be
the philosophy of what it means to grow it because I soon found out that to
grow such food is a syntropic process. Syntropy is a word introduced by good
old Bucky Fuller [may he reside in heaven] as the opposite of entropy.
Entropy means things are running down. Syntropy means they run up. So, if
growing great food involves syntropy, then growing food of the highest
quality, such as would turn us all into holy folks [remember we are talking
holistic] this means we must heal the earth. And to heal the earth means we
must reclaim the Sahara Desert.
I say we, and I mean we. We’re all in this together, sink or swim. I, and a
great many others, have found and developed the methods; and wherever we go
we find the means. There keeps being more of us and we keep finding more
means. As far as this Earth is concerned, I do not foresee any end short of
reclaiming the Sahara. I haven’t for the last 35 years. This website is
meant to be a celebration of that vision. –Hugh Lovel, 12:45 a.m. 29th of
March, 2009, Tolga, Queensland, Australia, Earth, Milky Way, Beyond.