Natural Images in Economic Thought

Markets Read in Tooth and Claw

Philip Mirowski editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:29th Jul '94

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Natural Images in Economic Thought cover

This 1994 book was the first collection devoted to impact of natural sciences on content and form of economics in history.

The first serious encounter between the science studies community and historians of economic thought, this 1994 book will serve to integrate previously disjointed inquiries. Numerous examples over three centuries are explored in the light of the new history of science, from Quesnay to Marshall to Jevons and Hayek.This 1994 collection of interdisciplinary essays was the first to investigate how images in the history of the natural and physical sciences have been used to shape the history of economic thought. The contributors, historians of science and economics alike, document the extent to which scholars have drawn on physical and natural science to ground economic ideas and evaluate the role and importance of metaphors in the structure and content of economic thought. These range from Aristotle's discussion of the division of labour, to Marshall's evocation of population biology, to Hayek's dependence upon evolutionary concepts, and more recently to neoclassical economists' invocation of chaos theory. Resort to such images, contributors find, was more than mere rhetorical flourish. Rather, appeals to natural and physical metaphors serve to constitute the very subject matter of the discipline and what might be accepted as the 'economic'.

"The book is a good reference for teachers of the history of economic thought or philosophy of economics." The Southern Economic Journal
"...I recommend this volume to anyone interested in a lively debate about the intellectual cross-pollination between the natural and social sciences. Many of the essays are provocative." John C. Moorhouse, Reason Papers

ISBN: 9780521478847

Dimensions: 227mm x 151mm x 41mm

Weight: 867g

636 pages