This panel considers the proposition that economics “has always been a science of life.” I agree, and offer three instances of the transfer and exchange of models, tools, and matters of concern between economists and biologists modeling growth (population and economic) in the 20th century. I argue that by looking at them as a group we can trace the development of attitudes towards life and growth as a problem, though each case is embedded in its own time and place. First, Raymond Pearl and Alfred Lotka’s work on life tables and the logistic curve offers a view into an early relationship between industry, government, and academic research impacting ecology, life insurance, and demography. Second, I show how Garrett Hardin’s influential paper, The Tragedy of the Commons, was taken up by two distinct groups of political economists in the Public Choice school. James Buchanan and Gordon Tulluck adapted Hardin’s model to support their analysis of rent-seeking, while Elinor Ostrom’s Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis reworked the Tragedy of the Commons into a fate that could be avoided. I conclude with speculation about why these two disciplines, though far separated by traditional academic divisions, have almost compulsively looked over each others’ shoulders in multiple instances. Why do economists and biologists care enough about one another to want to borrow each others’ tools?
