A note on the Schumacher college MA in ecological economics

Schumacher College (in cooperation with the University of Plymouth) is launching a MA in ecological economics. The MA program is called "Economics for Transition - Achieving low carbon, high well-being, resilient economies."

I think it's great the MA is being introduced, but a bit puzzled that the word "growth" only appear once, towards the very end of the website presenting the MA.

What you will learn
...

Use sources of knowledge and evidence to powerfully critique the dominant economic growth model

Surely economic growth is risky to describe in critical terms, given how many offer simplistic, not very insightful critique - but hardly mentioning the phenomenon at all is not very promising either.

Schumacher College also offers a MSc in Holistic Science.

Brian Goodwin (1931-2009)

I just got the news that Brian Goodwin is dead, since July 15th.

B.G. held a PhD in theoretical biology. Among his books are How The Leopard Changed Its Spots (1994). He liked climbing trees. B.G. will be remembered for his pioneering contributions to theoretical biology and complexity science, not least through his development of biological structuralism (incomplete Wikipedia-article here). For many years at the end of his life (ten, or a bit more) Brian taught at Schumacher College, UK. His latest title there was "Scholar in residence". In addition to contributing to short courses he taught at their groundbreaking MSc in Holistic science - for which he was of foundational importance, along with staff ecologist (deep ecologist, James Lovelock-colleague) Stephan Harding.

Personally I encountered Goodwin at two occasions. First, when - the autumn of 1999 - I resided at Schumacher college for three months as a volunteer. B.G. was at that point the main responsible for the newly created MSc in Holistic science, which I believe was in its second year. Now and then I got to listen to his talks in the MSc or in courses, or talk with him at dinner etc. My second encounter with Goodwin occured in the summer/autumn of 2006. At the age of 75, he accepted an invitation to figure in the advisory board of a Nordic-Baltic Research Network for Philosophy of Biology. The network never got funding, and therefore never materialised. I was onboard as the assigned secretary of this network.