Edward Elgar Publishing Foundations of Economic Evolution: A Treatise on the Natural Philosophy of Economics (New Horizons in Institutional and Evolutionary Economics series)

'Herrmann-Pillath's work attempts to bring to bear upon the discipline of economics perspectives from other discourses which have been burgeoning recently -- namely, thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, and semiotics, aiming at a consilience contextualized by economic activity and problems. This marks the work as a contemporary example of natural philosophy, which is now at the doorstep of a revival. The overall perspective is that human economic activity is an aspect of the ecology of the earth s surface, viewing it as an evolving physical system mediated through distributed mentality as expressed in technology evolution. Knowledge is taken to be ''physical'' with a performative function, as in Peirce's pragmaticism. Thus, the social meanings of expectations, prices and credit are found to be rooted in energy flows. The work draws its foundation from Hegel and C.S. Peirce and its immediate guidance from Hayek, Veblen and Georgescu-Roegen. The author generates an energetic theory of economic growth, guided by Odum's maximum power principle. Economic discourse itself is reworked in the final chapter, in light of the examinations of the previous chapters, naturalizing economics within an extremely powerful contemporary framework.' - Stanley N. Salthe, Binghamton University, SUNY