 The Case for a New Discipline: Technosphere ScienceEcological Economics, 2018, vol. 149, issue C, 212-225 Abstract: This paper submits the philosophical case for establishing ‘technosphere science’ that draws on results of many other disciplines, reaching from physics to the social sciences and humanities. I present claims about the type of entities that are studied by technosphere science and their causal relationships, and introduce central organizing concepts, such as ‘information’ and ‘function’. Agency is no longer seen as a property exclusive to humans, but as being distributed in networks of ontologically diverse entities. Technosphere science draws on various uses of the concept of ‘networks’ across disciplines, such as scaling laws and builds on a universal evolutionary framework that generalizes over biological evolution. In this perspective, the economy is the medium by which human action becomes functional relative to the reproduction and growth of the technosphere. I conclude with showing how human autonomy and ethical commitments remain possible. Keywords: Anthropocene; Technosphere; Anthropocentrism; Artefacts; General theory of evolution; Functions; Networks; Agency; Energy and information; Thermodynamics; Maximum power; Categorical imperative (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:149:y:2018:i:c:p:212-225 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.03.024 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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