Arno Peters: Difference between revisions

Arno Peters (May, 22nd, 1916, Berlin – December, 2nd, 2002, Bremen) – german researcher and philosopher, geographer, historian, economic and humanist. Contrary to the eurocentristic point of view of the world Arno Peters established a more neutral map of the world based on the history. He established the theory of the equivalent economy. He is a supporter of a new worldwide system based on a socialistic structure for a global society. He opposes the capitalistic forms of economy.

Arno Peters was born in Berlin in 1916. After finishing school, he studied history and publicism at the University of Berlin. There he graduated and got the doctor's degree in 1945.

Since 1974 he worked as a director af the institute for universal history in Bremen. He is father of seven children. His hobbies include art, swimming, cycling and sailing. He died on December 2nd, 2002 in Bremen.

Arno Peters can be seen as an universal scientist, polyhistor. The span of his research spreads from history, over cartography, social organisation, pilitics and economy to music.

While trying to overcome the eurocentrism whithin historic disciplines, Peters worked out a synro-optic concept of the world history (historical method of Peters) in 1952, in which he presented 25 different historic civilisations and cultures of the world, related to each one by time (syncronical) and within a tabular form (optical). According to this method the history of the european civilisation takes an appropriate place between other civilisations ilke those of asia, america and africa. This way the presentation of the hostory of the world differs from the euro-centric cartography, in which the developement of other civilisations is shown by whether superiority betwenn each other or independency of each other. Peters points out that cultures and civilisations develope throughout the time in close interdependence and have an influence on each other.

As in the history Peters fought against the eurocentrism also within the cartography. In 1973 he created a world map (Peter's map), in which he draw the outlines of the earth and continents in their true shape according to the area of the planet and changed the net of coordinates based on degrees to a rectangular (orthogonal) basis within a decimal measurement. This way, the objective appeareance of the position of the continents, the countries and their relation to each other changed on Peter's map. The distortion of the surface by the degree based net, which appeared in form of a stretched size of the territory to the north-south and clinched to the east-west, was now removed.

Resulting from Peter's method was an optical shrinking of the size of Europe's territory and its distancing from the centre of the world map to the north on the one hand and the enlargenment of the territories of the african, the asian and south-american continents and their approach to the centre in order to their large territory on the other hand.

Peter's map, alongside the just technical renewals, which were directed to a more objective reflection of the physical reality, caused some political resonance in Europe, directed against the destruction of the common eurocentric appeareance, manifested also in the common cartography. Up to the present time the number of Peter's maps in different countries of the world comes down to more than 80 millions, published in seven languages.

On the basis if this map Peters created an atlas (Peter's atlas) in 1989, in which single countries are presented on one and the same scale. This was new in cartography. It allowed to directly compare the sizes of the territories of countries. Like with Peter's map, also the atlas was meant to eliminate the euro-centric point of view and suggested an objective piont of view on the physicial – geographic parameters of the worlds countries. Where in most of atlases of the world maps of european countries werde placed on half of the space in an enlarged size and on the other half the rest of the 15/16 of the dry land in in an shrinked size, in Peter's atls all of the countries were drawn in one and the same size. By a comparing look the european countries seem pretty small next to other countries., which, as with Peter's map, also lead to an critical echo in the european world.

Peter's atlas war produces by UNICEF and many other major European publishers.

In 1984 Peters developed a method of recording sounds with the help of colours (Peter's recording). For this he applied the method of presenting the historical time by the optical approach, which was invented by him earlier (the concept of the syncro-optical method of the worlds history, as seen above). This way the music could be translated according to its height within a graphically color-coded method. This way, Peters' method allowed to record every possible sound in form of a graphical pillar, whose height corresponded to a lenghts of an octave.

From 1983 on Peters worked on the theory of the equivalent economy. His ambition was to create a economic system, that fits the needs of all people. Peters thought, that as well as worlds economy, also the lokal economy does not target the real needs of people, but by offer and demand the gaol of profits. However the absence of price-oriented demand does not deny the existence of real needs of products and services. As a main goal Peters recognized the satisfaction of people's needs. In the footsteps of Aristotle, Peters divided the economy into a basic economy, aimed at the satisfaction of the needs and a chrematical economy – the earning of benefit out of money (profit out of the capital).

As an alternative to the common capitalistic economy Peters suggested his version of an equivalent economy, in which the products and services are traided not on the basis of money, but on the basis of their costs. After David Ricardo, Peters determines the costs of each product or service as a summ of the final working time, put into the particular product or service. The work, the amount of working time – this establishes the costs of the product or service. In Peters' opinion the exchange of products and services should happen in a stringent correspondence to the working time spend on their completion, without depending on the exact kind of the work: the costs of eight hours of a director of a factory exactly corresponds to eight hours of work of a metal worker or a cleaning lady. This objectivity of the scale to determine the costs of goods and services – time – leads to its universality. According to Peters this way a fair trade is not only possible within a single country, but also between countries themselves. In order to determine the final costs of a product or service Peters devoloped a special matrix (so called Peters Rose) in which the time of work of each participant is included.

Consequences of the equivalent economy:

• the temporal fluctuation of prices by a constand level of demand of products and services vanishes

• the absence of speculation with products and money, leading to unexpected and unfair allocation of prosperity

• the impossibility of economic and financial crises

• the automatic abolishment of the division of the society into classes or the poor and wealthy

the appproach of standarts of life between the industrial and third world countries during the process of traiding because of the absence of the influence on their economy, politics and social society by the capital

• the matter of property is solved, because the amount of personal posessions is now determined by

• the amount of working time of each one, which is naturally limited by the life span

• the economical and social stability of the society

The handicap to the complete efficiency of the equivalent economy according to Peters lies within the limited ability of the single countries to internally produce all of the needed goods.Only the the trade of products and services on a global scale by applying the principles of the equivalent economy can lead to a full effectivity of the given economical model. To achieve this effectivity it is necessary to plan the economy on the local, regional and the global level.

In 2000 Peters supplemented his theory by the element of the IT-socialism. In conformance with Konrad Zuse, the inventor of the worlds first computer, Peters considered it to be useful to apply modern and efficient computers to solve the planning, the dirigating and the distributional tasks within the economy of the upcoming social society. According to this ideas, the majority of processes within the planned economy is dirigated from one single centre, which makes the navigation, the production and dirstibution of products and services in correspondence to the general needs extremely difficult and nearly impossible. All this tasks, so Peters, should be solved by modern informational technologies and computer navigated production and guidance. In the centre of the navigational system the computer should collect and handle all data send by other computers from large, medium and small economical sectors. According to Peters, the unlucky experience with the planning in earlier socialistic economies can be explained with the high difficulty of the planning, which was inappropriate in the time of poorly developed informational technologies.

Arno Peters is the ideological mentor of the well-known Laitn American socialist and public activist of the german origin Heinz Dieterich, who takes an active part by counceling the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez with his realization of the socialistic reforms in that country. The political statement of Chavez to lead Venezuela into the socialism of the 21st century has been used by Dieterich as the title of his book (1996), based on the ideas of Peters' equivalent and computer planned economy. Dieterich stood in close personal contact with Peters up till Peters' death in 2002.

• Arno Peters: Synchronoptische Weltgeschichte (Synchronoptic World History,)1952

• Arno Peters: Space and Time - Their Equal Representation as an Essential Basis for a Scientific View of the World, 1982, ISBN: 037700149X / 0-377-00149-X

• Arno Peters: The Peters World Atlas: The Earth in Its True Proportion, ISBN: 0954049950

• Arno Peters: Peters Projection World Map - Laminated, ISBN: 0783423616 / 0-7834-2361-6

• Arno Peters: New Cartography, 1984, ISBN: 0377001473

• Arno Peters: Das Äquivalenz-Prinzip als Grundlage der Global-Ökonomie (Aquivalence principle as basis of the global oconomy), 1995

• Arno Peters, Konrad Zuse: Computer-Sozialismus. Gespräche mit Konrad Zuse (Computer-socialism. Talks with Konrad Zuse), 2000

• http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article800223.ece
• http://www.oxfordcartographers.com/publish/peters.htm
• http://www.heliheyn.de/Cont_E.html
• http://www.petersmap.com/
• http://www.odtmaps.com/detail.asp_Q_product_id_E_apeters-dvd
• http://www.kirche-muelheim.de/u5/seiten/peterspro.html

• Peters Photoalbum
• Video about Peters World Map
• Video-Interview with Arno Peters, interviewed by Heinz Dieterich (2000)Template:Ref-de

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