Bio‐Economics: Social Economy Versus the Chicago School

Abstract

The description “bio‐economics” is currently being claimed by two opposing schools of thought. For one group of economists, led by Kenneth Boulding, Herman Daly and Nicholas Georgescu‐Roegen, the term is chosen to emphasise the biological foundations of our economic activity. They remind us that the human species, as members of the animal kingdom, live as other species do, by taking low entropy from the natural environment and discharging it back into that environment as high‐entropy waste. The economic system is thus viewed as a sub‐set of larger processes taking place in the natural world. This school questions the reductionism typical of modern science and seeks to build an alternative approach based on a holistic view of nature and society.

Citation

Gowdy, J.M. (1987), "Bio‐Economics: Social Economy Versus the Chicago School", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 32-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb014035