More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics

by Philip Mirowski

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521426893
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/29/1991
Series:	Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of tables; Epigraph; Acknowledgments; Dedication; 1. The fearful spheres of Pascal and Parmenides; 2. Everything an economist needs to know about physics but was probably afraid to ask: the history of the energy concept; 3. Body, motions and value; 4. Science and substance theories of value in political economy to 1870; 5. Neoclassical economics: an irresistible field of force meets an immovable object; 6. The corruption of the field theory of value, and the retrogression to substance theories of value: neoclassical production theory; 7. The ironies of physics envy; 8. Universal history is the story of different intonations given to a handful of metaphors.

Editorial Reviews

"Intellectual stars of his magnitude (as opposed to scientific stars) don't come along very often....in More Heat Than Light...he states a challenge that is going to haunt economists for years....Mirowski and his ideas are about to move out of the history of economics into the wider stream." David Warsh, The Boston Globe

"...a major contribution to twentieth century literature in economic thought. It is destined to become a classic and must be read and reread." Southern Economic Journal

"...an excellent and enthralling volume, written with great erudition and wit." Review of Political Economy

"No previous writer has made such a sustained and determined effort to explore the undeniably important conceptual links between economics and physics; and this alone is a landmark contribution of importance to all economists, not merely to specialist historians of the discipline." Kyklos

"...an example of the history of economic theory at its best." Charles M. A. Clark, Eastern Economic Journal

From the Publisher