For the last three decades, physicists have been moving beyond the boundaries of their discipline, using their methods to study various problems usually instigated by economists. This trend labeled ‘econophysics’ can be seen as a hybrid area of knowledge that exists between economics and physics. Econophysics did not spring from nowhere—the existing literature agrees that econophysics emerged in the 1990s and historical studies on the field mainly deal with what happened during that decade. This article aims at investigating what happened before the 1990s by clarifying the epistemic background that might have paved the way to the emergence of econophysics. This historical exploration led me to highlight the active role played by the Santa Fe Institute by promoting interdisciplinary research on complexity in 1980s. Precisely, by defining three research themes on economic complexity, the SFI defined a research agenda and a way of extending physics\biology to economics. This article offers a possible archeology of econophysics to clarify what could have contributed to the development of a particular episteme in the 1980s easing the advent of econophysics in the 1990s.

在过去的三十年中，物理学家一直在超越自己学科的界限，使用他们的方法研究经济学家通常提出的各种问题。这种被称为“生态物理学”的趋势可以看作是经济学和物理学之间存在知识的混合领域。经济物理学并非从无到有—已有文献认为，经济物理学是在1990年代兴起的，该领域的历史研究主要涉及该十年期间发生的事情。本文旨在通过阐明可能为经济物理学的出现铺平道路的认识背景，来调查1990年代之前发生的事情。这项历史性的探索使我通过促进1980年代关于复杂性的跨学科研究突出了圣达菲研究所的积极作用。恰恰，通过定义关于经济复杂性的三个研究主题，SFI定义了研究议程以及将物理学\生物学扩展到经济学的方法。本文提供了一种可能的生态物理学考古学，以阐明在1980年代缓解了1990年代经济物理学的来临的特定认识论发展过程中可能做出的贡献。