With the ever-accelerating pace of daily life, the modern age seems to demand that science, too, should respond at speed. In this book Enzo Tiezzi highlights the continuity between the physical-mathematic and humanistic sciences. He also urges us to reflect on the tempo of the modern era, and to contrast it with the brilliance and complexity of the human relationship with a living world. A guide to the key scientific ideas of our time which relate ecology with economy with the laws of thermodynamics, and those that highlight an understanding of the human relationship with planet earth, the text traces themes such as entropy to negentropy, flux of energy and material and information. The result is an exploration of great scientific depth and the most complete historical survey to date of the ideas behind ecological economics.