Marshall, Alan | United Kingdom

Alan Marshall has a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Biology, Environmental Studies and the History of Science from the University of Wolverhampton, England, a Master of Philosophy in Environment and Development from Massey University, New Zealand, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Science, Technology and Society from the University of Wollongong, Australia.

His main active research and writing interests revolve around the history and philosophy of images of nature and the history and philosophy of the American space program. Alan's articles on these subjects have appeared in various places including the Journal of Applied Philosophy, A ustralasian Science, New Zealand Science Monthly, Space Policy, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, and Wild Earth.

From April to December 2000 he was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, Graz.  

Project at IAS-STS: The Ecology-Economy Analogy. A History o the Transdisiciplinary Use of the Concept of Selforganization in Ecology and Economics.

The concept of self-organization, which describes how individual entities organize themselves from their environment through certain physical processes, has emerged from the discipline of cybernetics at regular intervals throughout the past fifty years. Nowadays, cyberneticists are convinced that the selforganization concept is relevant to ecological studies. Indeed, they say that ecosystems are prime examples of selforganizing phenomena (contrary to a lot of counter-evidence). Many cyberneticists are also convinced that Free Market economies are examples of selforganizing phenomena (again, contrary to a lot of counter-evidence) and that therefore Free Market economies echo the workings of ecosystems. Why they think this, and the way they shape their stories of selforganization to convince other people, is the main subject of investigation in this project.