The biophysical economics logo from Charles Hall's workgroup.

“The relation between man and the domesticated species of animals and plants on which he so largely depends for food, in the present state of civilization, is only a particularly tangible, a particularly accessible example of an intricate network of relationships that connect more or less closely all living species. In this network each species or component is interlaced, like a link in a meshed coat of mail, with other species, which in turn connect with still others, and so forth. In our effort to get some sort of mental grasp of the complicated interlocking of these elements we seize upon some one link, some one species or component, and we note, first of all, that whatever is eliminated from one component of a self-contained system must pass into one or more other components of the system. So, for example, the component Si may be a herd of cattle. The matter eliminated from this component goes in part as food to build up or sustain a human population; in part it goes as fertilizer on the fields to furnish nutriment for crops; still other parts are worked up into various industrial products, such as leather, glue, etc. We thus have, in schematic representation:

On the other hand, the substance of the herd itself is recruited from certain other components of the system, grass, clover, corn, etc., so that we may further develop the scheme:

In general any one component thus appears as a link in a complicated chain or rather network of chains; the component Si, for example receives a certain fraction α of the mass VfXf eliminated per unit of time from the component Sf, it passes on to the component Sk certain fraction βik of the mass ViXi eliminated from Xi itself.”

“The restriction of this remark to the human species must not be taken to imply that there is in this feature something wholly peculiar to man, but rather, that underlying our economic manifestations are biological phenomena which we share in common with other species; and that the laying bare and clearly formulating of the relations thus involved. In other words, the analysis of the biophysical foundations of economics is one of the problems coming within the program of physical biology.”

— Alfred Lotka (1925), Elements of Physical Biology (pgs. 138-39)

“On the mistaken identification of prices and related economic quantities with the intensity factor of an energy, some authors, namely: Georg Helm (1877), Leon Winiarski (1900), Wilhelm Ostwald (1909, 1913), Emil Budde (1902) (Ѻ), and Julius Davidson (1919), have sought to build a system of biodynamics (social dynamics). The analogy which certain conjugate parameters of the perfectly general kind bear to intensity and capacity factors of an energy [see: intensive vs extensive] present the opportunity for such efforts, which are, in themselves, well worthwhile. But it must not be forgotten that the result of such efforts can be only a species of quasi-dynamics, something analogous to, but not identical with, the dynamics of physical forces. We may speak of the rent per unit area that the representative individual is willing to pay as a measure or at least an index of the ‘population pressure’. Now this population pressure this willingness to sacrifice effort for the sake of gaining elbowroom is present quite independently of our peculiar method of expressing it in terms of rent. It exists also among other species, though we may lack so convenient a gauge for it as we have, in our own case, in rent. We shall see later how at least a quantitative conception of such biophysical (economic) entities as population pressure and the like can be gained on a general basis, which applies to species other than human.”

— Alfred Lotka (1925), Elements of Physical Biology (pg. 304)

● Odum, Howard T. (1972). Environment, Power and Society. Columbia University Press, 2005.
● Odum, Howard T. (1988). “Self-organization, Transformity, and Information.” Science, 242: 1132-
● Odum, Howard T. (1995). Ecological and General Systems. University Press of Colorado.
● Odum, Howard T. (1995). “Self organization and maximum empower”, in: Maximum Power: the ideas and applications of H.T. Odum (editor Charles Hall) (pgs. 311-30). University Press of Colorado.