ABSTRACT
Despite the partial reorientation of neoclassical economists toward resource and environmental issues they still cling to the dogma of mechanistic epistemology. William Stanley Jevons, a founder of neoclassical economic thought, expressed this as building an economic science in terms of “the mechanics of self-interest and utility”. Since mechanics distinguishes only mass, position and speed, energy and matter entering into any process must leave that process in exactly the same quantity and quality (Georgescu-Roegen, 2009 [1975]). Strictly applying the mechanistic analogy in economics leads to the logical conclusion that the economic process is an eternal circular one that can never affect the quantity or quality of energy and matter in any way at all. Thus, there is no essential need for energy or matter to be included in the analytical picture of economic analysis. Furthermore, this logical conclusion entails an implicit and fallacious mechanistic epistemology, namely, energy and material flows are forthcoming from an immutable eternal source. This parallels David Ricardo's idea of land, in the classical school of economics, as being “the original and indestructible powers of soil”. The common economic myth is that a stationary social economic system with zero-growth of both endosomatic population (human body) and exosomatic population (detachable material structures outside of the human body) can be completely freed from energy and material constraints. This is why mainstream economists talk as if humans need never worry about the scarcity of natural resources or environmental constraints.
