As someone who wants to spend the rest of his life pondering just this
question (but is currently wondering if he will ever be able to find the
opportunity), and who spends some of his free time drawing odd shapes and
arrows, figuring out what types of flows and cycles there might be in human
society, I'm hoping (and I believe) the answer to your question of whether
economics can or cannot be seen in 'ecological' (or biospheric) terms is:
Yes it can.
Obviously, I don't think the biosphere would map perfectly onto what I
prefer to call the 'anthroposphere', but I think we can employ in the
understanding of human society the sort of approach to research that biology
applies to the biosphere. Obviously there will be huge differences and the
processes and structures would be different, but I think we should try to
achieve biology's ability to integrate different levels of research and
analysis into a common framework that all can refer to. I also believe that
the two spheres share some of the same processes and characteristics. In
terms of information coordination and feedback, as Gus describes it, but
also in terms of evolution, interdependence, some amount of
self-organisation, energy, resource and information cycles and flows,
division of labour, types of structures, competition, cooperation, etc.
I'm hoping that this sort of approach will also make social science more
descriptive, in terms of being more willing to examine human structures and
understand their anatomies.
Yeah, Rothschild's book is usually casually discounted, but when I
(sceptically) returned to it recently, I found some very useful insights,
indeed.
There aren't too many systematic treatments of this, but there are sizable
groups of people working in areas like (different types of) evolutionary
economics, cultural and instituitional evolution, organisational ecology
(which uses a population ecology approach to understand organisations),
industrial ecology, neuroeconomics, complexity economics, self-organisation,
etc.
Any progress in this direction would, I think, help improve our
understanding of the interactions between the biosphere and human society.
My own views of this are at too early a stage of development and I don't
really have too much to share at this moment. But I'm hoping I'll be able to
explore these issues in the near future if I can figure out how.
Best,
Chirag
----- Original Message -----
From: "STEVEN BISSELL" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 10:09 PM
Subject: Energy flow is to ecology as ? is to economics
> I'm teaching a course in Environmental Economics and I've been reading a
bit
> in the literature which makes analogous statements about economics and
> ecology; primarily about energy flow or 'cycles.' I'm beginning to think
> these are false analogies and that economics is purely a human cultural
> phenomenon and there is no really good way of thinking about economic
theory
> in ecological terms. All this is important because econmics is one of the
> major issues in environmental policy.
>
> Anyone have any ideas on this? Does anyone know of anything written on
this
> topic? Not environmental economics, I've got that covered; I'm looking for
> anything about how an ecologist might or might not use economic theory.
>
> Steven
>
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