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The Effortless Economy of Science?

Philip Mirowski

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English
Duke University Press
21 July 2004
"Reveals the value for science studies of examples arising within the history of economics A leading scholar of the history and philosophy of economic thought, Philip Mirowski argues that there has been a top-to-bottom transformation in how scientific research is organized and funded in Western countries over the past two decades and that these changes necessitate a reexamination of the ways that science and economics interact. Mirowski insists on the need to bring together the insights of economics, science studies, and the philosophy of science in order to understand how and why particular research programs get stabilized through interdisciplinary appropriation, controlled attributions of error, and funding restrictions. Mirowski contends that neoclassical economics have persistently presumed and advanced an ""effortless economy of science,"" a misleading model of a self-sufficient and conceptually self-referential social structure that transcends market operations in pursuit of absolute truth. In the stunning essays collected here, he presents a radical critique of the ways that neoclassical economics are used to support, explain, and legitimate the current social practices."

By:  
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 235mm,  Width: 154mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   671g
ISBN:   9780822333227
ISBN 10:   0822333228
Series:   Science and Cultural Theory
Pages:   472
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Part One From Economics to Science Studies 1 Introduction: Cracks, Hidden Passageways, and False Bottoms: The Economics of Science and Social Studies Economics 3 1. Confessions of an Aging Enfant Terrible 37 Part Two Science as an Economic Phenomenon 51 2. On Playing the Economics Card in the Philosophy of Science: Why It Didn’t Work for Michael Polanyi 53 3. Economics, Science, and Knowledge: Polanyi versus Hayek 72 4. What’s Kuhn Got to Do with It? 85 5. The Economic Consequences of Philip Kitcher 97 6. Re-engineering Scientific Credit in the Era of Globalized Information Economy 116 Part Three Rigorous Quantitative Measurement as a Social Phenomenon 145 7. Looking for Those Natural Numbers: Dimensionless Constants and the Idea of Natural Measurement 147 8. A Visible Hand in the Marketplace of Ideas: Precision Measurement as Arbitrage 169 Part Four Is Econometrics an Empirical Endeavor? 193 9. Brewing, Betting, and Rationality in London, 1822-1844: What Econometrics Can and Cannot Tell Us about Historical Actors 195 10. Why Econometricians Don’t Replicate (Although They Do Reproduce) 213 11. From Mandlebrot to Chaos in Economic Theory 229 12. Mandelbrot’s Economics after a Quarter-Century 251 13. The Collected Economic Works of William Thomas Thornton: An Introduction and Justification 273 14. Smooth Operator: How Marshall’s Demand and Supply-Curves Made Neoclassicism Safe for Public Consumption but Unfit for Science 335 15. Problems in the Paternity of Econometrics: Harry Ludwell Moore 357 16. Refusing the Gift 376 Notes 401 References 427 Index 459

Philip Mirowski is Carl Koch Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Among his books are Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science; More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics; and Science Bought and Sold: Essays in the Economics of Science (coedited with Esther-Mirjam Sent).

Reviews for The Effortless Economy of Science?

“The Effortless Economy of Science is an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, history of economics, and science studies. Philip Mirowski shows why work in each of these fields can be better understood by looking through the lens of other fields.”—Bradley W. Bateman, Gertrude B. Austin Professor of Economics, Grinnell College


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