Advice often given to students is to cite only the most recently published academic work. Anything more than a few years old is out of date. I must disagree. Many helpful ideas are lurking in dusty old tomes.
I recently read some things written over two hundred years ago. An early reference to what is now ecology described the Earth as having an internal economy. The idea of an internal economy is also applicable to the human body. Whole-body physiology is equivalent to an internal economy.
The impression conveyed is more meaningful than that conveyed by the word homeostasis. There is considerable discussion about the nation’s economy in the media. The use of the word economy always refers to something active. It implies something with an input and an output and much going on in between. What economies do, our bodies do, too. Thinking of our bodies as economies gives a better impression of what they are and how they are.
