1. The origins of material flow thinking

The roots of the "dematerialization" approach presented in this article can be found in work carried out since the late 1960s by a number of authors, both economists and natural scientists. What these authors have in common is that, in their view of the economy, they take into account certain concepts from the physical and natural sciences, including, above all, the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. In these approaches, the material and energy flows passing between nature and the economy take on a major role, in order to better expose the relationship between the economy and its physical and natural basis.