A New Principles of Economics

CHAPTER FOUREvolution, ecology, economy

DOI: 10.4324/9781003094869-7

1. Introduction

In this chapter, we develop a general framework for approaching the human economy as part of the Earth system. Against the backdrop of the previous chapters, we aim at establishing criteria and conceptual frames for approaching the economy from a third-person view and in terms of its materiality. This means to build cross-disciplinary bridges to physics, chemistry, and biology in adopting a life sciences perspective.¹ The goal is to abandon the anthropocentric focus of economics and adopt a geocentric view.² That means, we approach the human economy as a regulatory layer in Earth system dynamics, which has emerged in the transition to the Anthropocene.³