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Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics
More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics
This is a history of how physics has drawn some inspiration from economics and how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value. The author traces the development of the energy concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect on the invention and promulgation of neoclassical economics, the modern orthodox theory.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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791 people want to read
About the author
Philip Mirowski
30 books73 followersPhilip Mirowski (born 21 August 1951, Jackson, Michigan) is a historian and philosopher of economic thought at the University of Notre Dame (Carl E. Koch Professor of Economics and Policy Studies and the History and Philosophy of Science). He received a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1979, and is a Director of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 13, 2020
It's amazing that economics departments everywhere weren't delegated to a sub-discipline of psychology after this book was published.
December 30, 2014
Thermodynamics as ideology
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2013 posted revenues for $74 billion and $274 million profits. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites].
Snarky, damning, mostly unbearable (Mirowski's signature), and for all the sneering, deeply depressing review of economics as an intellectual discipline. With physics cutting an even more sorry figure. What's new in fact is not that economics is definetively proved to be sloppy, clunky and irrational - which any undergraduate can experience first hand - but that physics is no better.
An obsession with the cultural idea (in the anthropological sense) of closed systems sustains the development of a host of apparently purely technical and rational theoretical devices such as double entry accounting and the first 'law' of thermodynamics and - by now I'm sure - many other apparatuses (Foucault is evoked but his approach to knowledge analysis not applied, as Mirowski's critique is self-contained in the discipline's lineages, or in his own words, 'internalist'). The obsession translates into an unquenchable thirst for conservation principles, whereby the 'active' elements of the rigorously closed system MUST be offset by equivalent 'passive' elements, and the sum of the two MUST equal zero. Potential energy is offset by kinetic energy, debts by credits, and even in the body - turned by Harvey into a closed system - the blood created is always offset by the blood consumed.
Mirowski calls this the body/motion/value metaphorical 'simplex' (as opposed to Eisenhower's military- industrial 'complex'?). Very charitably, and in anti-Foucauldian terms, he posits it as a heuristics, i.e. a tool for developing knowledge.
But knowledge tends to be useful. Mirowski looks the other way, only interested in theories' internal architecture. If neoclassical economics' architecture is not self-sustaining, clearly there must be some external force shoring it up. Politics is out of the question for Mirowski in 1989. But never has usefulness been a sin for thermodynamics or physics in general, as Joule or Carnot's stories confirm. If thermodynamics was the science of industrialization, able to harness a type of energy eventually independent from nature's whims, 'sunshine bottled up', what was this flawed science of value supposed to accomplish?
Mirowski does not ask, busy as he is proving that economics' borrowing of notions and formulas from proto-energetics was incomplete, unsteady and ultimately a total failure. But his envy for the handsome salaries earned by neoclassical quants is evidence that it was actually a huge political success.
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2013 posted revenues for $74 billion and $274 million profits. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites].
Snarky, damning, mostly unbearable (Mirowski's signature), and for all the sneering, deeply depressing review of economics as an intellectual discipline. With physics cutting an even more sorry figure. What's new in fact is not that economics is definetively proved to be sloppy, clunky and irrational - which any undergraduate can experience first hand - but that physics is no better.
An obsession with the cultural idea (in the anthropological sense) of closed systems sustains the development of a host of apparently purely technical and rational theoretical devices such as double entry accounting and the first 'law' of thermodynamics and - by now I'm sure - many other apparatuses (Foucault is evoked but his approach to knowledge analysis not applied, as Mirowski's critique is self-contained in the discipline's lineages, or in his own words, 'internalist'). The obsession translates into an unquenchable thirst for conservation principles, whereby the 'active' elements of the rigorously closed system MUST be offset by equivalent 'passive' elements, and the sum of the two MUST equal zero. Potential energy is offset by kinetic energy, debts by credits, and even in the body - turned by Harvey into a closed system - the blood created is always offset by the blood consumed.
Mirowski calls this the body/motion/value metaphorical 'simplex' (as opposed to Eisenhower's military- industrial 'complex'?). Very charitably, and in anti-Foucauldian terms, he posits it as a heuristics, i.e. a tool for developing knowledge.
But knowledge tends to be useful. Mirowski looks the other way, only interested in theories' internal architecture. If neoclassical economics' architecture is not self-sustaining, clearly there must be some external force shoring it up. Politics is out of the question for Mirowski in 1989. But never has usefulness been a sin for thermodynamics or physics in general, as Joule or Carnot's stories confirm. If thermodynamics was the science of industrialization, able to harness a type of energy eventually independent from nature's whims, 'sunshine bottled up', what was this flawed science of value supposed to accomplish?
Mirowski does not ask, busy as he is proving that economics' borrowing of notions and formulas from proto-energetics was incomplete, unsteady and ultimately a total failure. But his envy for the handsome salaries earned by neoclassical quants is evidence that it was actually a huge political success.
April 17, 2022
Mirowski is a fun writer. Describing Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson's work in Economics as:
requires some chutzpah.
Despite this I can't say it's an easy read for everyone, there is a bunch of math and technical discussion which may not make as much sense without the appropriate background. Intuitively some of the things do make sense. However coming from multi-agent systems literature people are now more aware of non-transitive relationships, path dependence in optimization and "alternative" equilibria to better characterize actual agent behaviors so would love to know find out what effect the book had on the Economics community and if things have changed at the ground level now.
High mathematical rigor is regularly forced to cohabit with low semantic comedy.
requires some chutzpah.
Despite this I can't say it's an easy read for everyone, there is a bunch of math and technical discussion which may not make as much sense without the appropriate background. Intuitively some of the things do make sense. However coming from multi-agent systems literature people are now more aware of non-transitive relationships, path dependence in optimization and "alternative" equilibria to better characterize actual agent behaviors so would love to know find out what effect the book had on the Economics community and if things have changed at the ground level now.
August 4, 2018
Very interesting at times despite being aimed at someone with more of a modern econ background than myself. The intellectual history was fascinating but commentary that structured it wasn't that great in my opinion, for several reasons. The simplest is that he doesn't actually know the modern science he's talking about well enough to not make important mistakes with his claims, such as the claim that integrability of a dynamical system and the conservation of energy are equivalent and therefore that chaotic dynamics preclude the conservation of energy. These are less important IMO since they only appear vital for arguments that I don't think are that valuable or interesting in the first place.
Mirowski is interested primarily in uncovering some grand family of analogy in the sciences relating energy to value and also to the life sciences in some way, perhaps akin to an Umberto Eco protagonist. I dont think this is that valuable or useful, beyond something fairly specific which I think is important. He often goes on and on about the various ways in which certain ideas began to enter into the common scholarly consciousness, for example conservation of energy or using ideas from mechanics to cast utility as a potential energy. He is never very specific about how this occurs beyond descriptions of people with business interests attending lectures in mechanics, and how these ideas seem to come from multiple places at once in certain epochs also doesnt appear to be that interesting to him beyond noting the inaptness of these important concepts having a single "discoverer" who came up with a neat explanation whole cloth.
I believe that these segments house a very interesting portion of the book. Essentially, I would claim that Mirwoski has unwittingly engaged in an exposition of bourgeois science. He described the the mechanisms by which scientific investigations (made possible by the support of the bourgeois with the idea that the advances will prove to be valuable in some way, and in fact were) which themselves took on a bourgeois ideological character in their foundational metaphors, are in turn recuperated more directly by the bourgeoisie into an exposition of a thoroughly bourgeois conception of the economy. By borrowing from energy physics, itself cast in terms of seeking Perfection and coming closer to god, neoclassical economics was able to present the function of markets as proceeding along this same trajectory. He very neatly describes how the various people involved were in social circles that were connected, either personally or indirectly, by their bourgeois character. Someone was a physician, someone else owned a brewery, a further person was supposed to take over a business, and so on. This is the sort of phenomenon that many Marxists talk about without always feeling the need to develop it in detail (probably because it's painstaking work) and seeing it all laid out like this was interesting.
Mirowsky even touches on some vague elements of this himself. He indicates that there are political reasons why this neoclassical vision of markets as rocketing out society to the perfection of being perched atop a maximum is important to defend, but doesn't make it an important point. Presumably now that a neoliberal conception of markets as the ultimate computer in existence is gaining steam it will end up being possible to dispense with convex optimization but who knows I guess.
Anyway, it was a fun read, politically very interesting at times and at others quite dull.
Mirowski is interested primarily in uncovering some grand family of analogy in the sciences relating energy to value and also to the life sciences in some way, perhaps akin to an Umberto Eco protagonist. I dont think this is that valuable or useful, beyond something fairly specific which I think is important. He often goes on and on about the various ways in which certain ideas began to enter into the common scholarly consciousness, for example conservation of energy or using ideas from mechanics to cast utility as a potential energy. He is never very specific about how this occurs beyond descriptions of people with business interests attending lectures in mechanics, and how these ideas seem to come from multiple places at once in certain epochs also doesnt appear to be that interesting to him beyond noting the inaptness of these important concepts having a single "discoverer" who came up with a neat explanation whole cloth.
I believe that these segments house a very interesting portion of the book. Essentially, I would claim that Mirwoski has unwittingly engaged in an exposition of bourgeois science. He described the the mechanisms by which scientific investigations (made possible by the support of the bourgeois with the idea that the advances will prove to be valuable in some way, and in fact were) which themselves took on a bourgeois ideological character in their foundational metaphors, are in turn recuperated more directly by the bourgeoisie into an exposition of a thoroughly bourgeois conception of the economy. By borrowing from energy physics, itself cast in terms of seeking Perfection and coming closer to god, neoclassical economics was able to present the function of markets as proceeding along this same trajectory. He very neatly describes how the various people involved were in social circles that were connected, either personally or indirectly, by their bourgeois character. Someone was a physician, someone else owned a brewery, a further person was supposed to take over a business, and so on. This is the sort of phenomenon that many Marxists talk about without always feeling the need to develop it in detail (probably because it's painstaking work) and seeing it all laid out like this was interesting.
Mirowsky even touches on some vague elements of this himself. He indicates that there are political reasons why this neoclassical vision of markets as rocketing out society to the perfection of being perched atop a maximum is important to defend, but doesn't make it an important point. Presumably now that a neoliberal conception of markets as the ultimate computer in existence is gaining steam it will end up being possible to dispense with convex optimization but who knows I guess.
Anyway, it was a fun read, politically very interesting at times and at others quite dull.
March 10, 2021
If you'll allow me the, grantedly undeserved, pretentiousness of being a deconstructionist of the post-modernist scientific deconstruction project, a question hovering in the air still waiting to be answered is why the writers of books in this style are often so unbearably arrogant. Mirowski is no exception, I read a review that quipped "Mirowski's hatred of neoclassical economics borders on the pathological: one sometimes wonders if his mother didn't run off with a neoclassical economist, leaving little Phil bereft in the cradle".
Having said that, once one gets over the style (which includes some moments of pure speculation about some of the early neoclassicals' lack of understanding of physics based only on Mirowski's tendency to assume that everyone else is dumb while he is the God-given genius we need but fail to appreciate), there is much food for thought in this book. The main point of the book - that neoclassical economics represented a discountinuous break from classical economics, which started with economists such as Jevons and Walras trying to emulate energy physics of mid 19th century, pretty much through copying the mathematical arsenal it used a bit carelessly - is well established with quite convincing evidence. Mirowski then discusses how the limitations imposed by this poor metaphor (of utility as energy) brought a lot of difficulties to economists trying to introduce production into their economic models. Reading the book did make me understand better where some of the neoclassical economic tools come from and think about some of their limitations.
You can tell Mirowski intended to have this book as a grand contribution to the deconstruction of science and he includes some discussion on the evolution of science and Man's engagement with the world (the attempt to create metrics that allow the comparison of everything in a single measure). In this I feel the book is a little bit less convincing - Mirowski's view of metaphor in science seems a bit reductive as he continually seems to indicate that metaphor should only be used if you are willing to take it to the last consequences, if the two phenomena being compared are really pretty much the same.
I do not want to end the review with what I assume has been a common answer from economists to this book - that economics went its own way over the 20th century, and even if it started with a forced metaphor, it developed a life of its own - but the truth is that since this book was written much has changed in economics. While neoclassical economics is still reliant on utility theory which is what Mirowski sees as a travesty, its philosophy of science has changed significantly, with more and more work being computational and attempting to match data rather than develop theorems in the way that early micro theory did. I guess Mirowski addresses this in his other book Machine Dreams which I have not read.
Finally, let me say that if you're a bit interested in economics because after all it is a field of knowledge with much impact in our lives, but you have not really studied economics from any textbook in the past, this book is a bit too technical and in the weeds for you. Does not really read as an interesting book for the wider public (it even includes equations in the text...).
Having said that, once one gets over the style (which includes some moments of pure speculation about some of the early neoclassicals' lack of understanding of physics based only on Mirowski's tendency to assume that everyone else is dumb while he is the God-given genius we need but fail to appreciate), there is much food for thought in this book. The main point of the book - that neoclassical economics represented a discountinuous break from classical economics, which started with economists such as Jevons and Walras trying to emulate energy physics of mid 19th century, pretty much through copying the mathematical arsenal it used a bit carelessly - is well established with quite convincing evidence. Mirowski then discusses how the limitations imposed by this poor metaphor (of utility as energy) brought a lot of difficulties to economists trying to introduce production into their economic models. Reading the book did make me understand better where some of the neoclassical economic tools come from and think about some of their limitations.
You can tell Mirowski intended to have this book as a grand contribution to the deconstruction of science and he includes some discussion on the evolution of science and Man's engagement with the world (the attempt to create metrics that allow the comparison of everything in a single measure). In this I feel the book is a little bit less convincing - Mirowski's view of metaphor in science seems a bit reductive as he continually seems to indicate that metaphor should only be used if you are willing to take it to the last consequences, if the two phenomena being compared are really pretty much the same.
I do not want to end the review with what I assume has been a common answer from economists to this book - that economics went its own way over the 20th century, and even if it started with a forced metaphor, it developed a life of its own - but the truth is that since this book was written much has changed in economics. While neoclassical economics is still reliant on utility theory which is what Mirowski sees as a travesty, its philosophy of science has changed significantly, with more and more work being computational and attempting to match data rather than develop theorems in the way that early micro theory did. I guess Mirowski addresses this in his other book Machine Dreams which I have not read.
Finally, let me say that if you're a bit interested in economics because after all it is a field of knowledge with much impact in our lives, but you have not really studied economics from any textbook in the past, this book is a bit too technical and in the weeds for you. Does not really read as an interesting book for the wider public (it even includes equations in the text...).
May 8, 2019
I struggled with this a lot (probably equally due to his prose as my lack of maths) but Mirowski is always very exciting. (Whether excitingness is the best virtue for an historian or social theorist, if it's at the expense of other virtues, is another question.)
August 29, 2010
One of the best books I've ever read about what is wrong with contemporary economics as a field of study. I'm sure I would worship this book if I understood physics and calculus better.
October 19, 2021
It is not at all clear to me, that a chair has a single number representing its market value.
Person A might trade 30 loafs of bread for it and person B would trade 5 loafs of bread for it.
Yet somehow neoclassical theories of values assigns both chairs and bread a concrete number, a market value.
This book gave a good insight on the ideology that drives neoclassical economics and how this theory rose historically. I can rest a little more assured knowing that the world will not suddenly collapse, but, as Mirowski points out, cybernetic thoughts are displacing neoclassical economics.
Person A might trade 30 loafs of bread for it and person B would trade 5 loafs of bread for it.
Yet somehow neoclassical theories of values assigns both chairs and bread a concrete number, a market value.
This book gave a good insight on the ideology that drives neoclassical economics and how this theory rose historically. I can rest a little more assured knowing that the world will not suddenly collapse, but, as Mirowski points out, cybernetic thoughts are displacing neoclassical economics.
November 1, 2020
Incredibly incisive. Projects the problems that confound the foundation of economics as alterations and isometries with physical sciences.
May 21, 2021
Second Mirowski book I've read. This really encouraged me to read more of his work about the history of economics, science and social theory.
Mirowski's irony makes this more readable to me, but less readable to others.
Mirowski's irony makes this more readable to me, but less readable to others.
August 25, 2010
The most insightful history of economics that I've ever read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews