Herman Daly gives a brief account of the philosophical basis of Fredrick Soddy's Cartesian (dualistic) approach to economics.
Soddy, a (real) Nobel prize winner in chemistry, held that entropy is a chief limitation and that credit is not capable of creating perpetual motion, given finite real resources and the mathematics of compound interest. He was an opponent of economists' unlimited growth model and an advocate of 100% reserve banking under the gold standard of his day. Today he is better known as the founder of steady state economics, the forerunner of the economics of sustainability.
Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
Dualist Economics
Herman Daly
