Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T15:52:02.780Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Shall I Compare Thee to a Minkowski-Ricardo-Leontief-Metzler Matrix of the Mosak-Hicks Type?: Or, Rhetoric, Mathematics, and the Nature of Neoclassical Economic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Philip Mirowski
Affiliation:
Tufts University

Extract

Is rhetoric just a new and trendy way to épater les bourgeois? Unfortunately, I think that the newfound interest of some economists in rhetoric, and particularly Donald McCloskey in his new book and subsequent responses to critics (McCloskey, 1985a, 1985b), gives that impression. After economists have worked so hard for the past five decades to learn their sums, differential calculus, real analysis, and topology, it is a fair bet that one could easily hector them about their woeful ignorance of the conjugation of Latin verbs or Aristotle's Six Elements of Tragedy. Moreover, it has certainly become an academic cliché that economists write as gracefully and felicitously as a hundred monkeys chained to broken typewriters. The fact that economists still trot out Keynes's prose in their defense is itself an index of the inarticulate desperation of an inarticulate profession.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aristotle, . 1961. Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Barnes, B., and Shapin, S. (editors). 1979. Natural Order. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Bausor, Randall. 1986. “Time and Equilibrium.” In The Reconstruction of Economic Theory, edited by Mirowski, P., pp. 93136. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, Christina. 1986. “Should a Scientist Abstain From Metaphor?” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Blaug, Mark. 1974. The Cambridge Revolution: Success or Failure? London: IEA.Google Scholar
Blaug, Mark. 1980. The Methodology of Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bloor, David. 1982. “Durkheim and Mauss Revisited.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 13:267–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clower, Robert. 1967. “A Reconsideration of the Microfoundations of Monetary Theory.” Western Economic Journal 6:19.Google Scholar
Colvin, Phyllis. 1977. “Ontological and Epistemological Commitments in the Social Sciences.” In The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, edited by Mendelsohn, E., Weingart, P., and Whitely, R., pp. 103–28. Boston: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dauben, Joseph. 1984. “Conceptual Revolutions and the History of Mathematics.” In Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences, edited by Mendelsohn, E.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1973. Natural Symbols. London: Barrie and Jenkins.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1975. Implicit Meanings. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1982. In the Active Voice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Duhem, Pierre. 1977. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Translated by Wiener, P.. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, F. Y. 1881. Mathematical Psychics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Fisher, Irving. 1926. Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
France, Peter. 1965. Racine's Rhetoric. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1953. Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago: University Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Garner, C. 1979. “Academic Publication, Market Signalling and Scientific Research Decisions.” Econoniic Inquiry 17:575–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaukroger, Stephen. 1976. “Bachelard and the Problem of Epistemological Analysis.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 7:189244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaukroger, Stephen. (editor). 1980. Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics. Totawa, NJ: Barnes and Noble.Google Scholar
Guth, Alan. 1983. “Speculations on the Origin of Matter, Energy and the Entropy of the Universe.” In Asymptotic Realms of Physics, edited by Guth, A., Huang, K., and Jaffe, R., pp. 199216. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hahn, Frank. 1986. “Living With Uncertainty in Economics.” Times Literary Supplement 4348 (1 August):833–34.Google Scholar
Harcourt, Geoffrey. 1972. Some Cambridge Controversies in the Theory of Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harcourt, Geoffrey. 1982. The Social Science Imperialists. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra (editor). 1976. Can Theories Be Refuted? Boston: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich. 1979. The Counter-Revolution of Science. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary. 1966. Models and Analogies in Science. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary. 1974. The Structure of Scientific Inference. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hesse, Mary. 1980. Revolutions and Reconstruction in the Philosophy of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary. 1985. “Texts without Types and Lumps without Laws.” New Literary History 17:3148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hicks, J.R. 1979. Causality in Economics. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Jevons, W. S. 1905a. The Principles of Science, 2nd ed.London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jevons, W. S. 1905b. The Principles of Economics. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark (editor). 1981. Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Klamer, Arjo. 1983. Conversations with Economists. Totawa, NJ: Allenheld and Rowman.Google Scholar
Klamer, Arjo. 1985. “Economics as Discourse.” Unpublished manuscript. Wellesley College.Google Scholar
Kline, Morris. 1972. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kline, Morris. 1980. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge. New York: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling. 1957. Three Essays on the State of Economic Science. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Krimsky, Sheldon. 1982. Genetic Alchemy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lakatos, Imre. 1976. Proofs and Refutations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. 1980. “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language.” Journal of Philosophy 77:453–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, Donald. 1983. “The Rhetoric of Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 21:481517.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald. 1985a. The Rhetoric of Economics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald. 1985b. “Sartorial Epistemology in Tatters.” Economics and Philosophy 1:134137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menard, Claude. 1980. “Three Forms of Resistance to Statistics: Say, Cournot, Walras.” History of Political Economy 12:524–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menard, Claude. 1983. “La Machine et le Coeur: Essai sur les analogies dans la raisonnement économique.” In Analogies et Connaissance, edited by Lichnerowicz, A. pp. 138–61. Paris: Maloine.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1984a. “Physics and the Marginalist Revolution.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 8:361–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1984b. “The Role of Conservation Principles in 20th Century Economic Theory.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 14:461–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1985a. “The Sciences Were Never at War?” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1985b. “Institutions as Solution Concepts in a Game Theory Context.” In Microeconomic Theory, edited by Samuelson, Larry. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1986. “Mathematical Formalism and Economic Explanation.” In The Reconstruction of Economic Theory, edited by Mirowski, P.. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1987. “The Philosophical Foundations of Institutionalist Economics.” Journal of Economic Issues (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. Forthcoming. More Heat Than Light. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, Nancy. 1984. From Faraday to Einstein. Dordrecht: Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Olson, Harry. 1958. Dynamical Analogies, 2nd ed.Princeton: Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Ortony, A. (editor). 1979. Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pareto, Vilfredo. 1935. The Mind and Society. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Pareto, Vilfredo. 1953. “On the Economic Phenomenon.” International Economic Papers 3:180–96.Google Scholar
Pickering, Andrew. 1984. Constructing Quarks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Prigogine, Ilya. 1980. From Being to Becoming. New York: Freeman.Google Scholar
Pyenson, Lewis. 1983. Neohumanism and the Persistence of Pure Mathematics in Wilhemian Germany. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Quine, W., and Ullian, J. 1970. The Web of Belief. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Robbins, Lionel. 1952. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1986. “The Contingency of Language.” London Review of Books 8:36.Google Scholar
Samuelson, Paul. 1966. The Collected Scientific Papers, 2 vols., edited by Stiglitz, J.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schoemaker, Paul. 1982. “The Expected Utility Model.” Journal of Economic Literature 20:529–63.Google Scholar
Shackle, G. 1967. Time in Economics. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven. 1984. “Talking History: Reflections on Discourse Analysis.” Isis 75:125–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theobald, D. 1966. The Concept of Energy. London: Spon.Google Scholar
Tiles, Mary. 1984. Bachelard: Science and Objectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walras, Leon. 1960. “Économique et Mécanique.” Metroeconomica 12:313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1976. Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1939, edited by Diamond, Cora. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1978. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wong, Stanley. 1978. The Foundations of Samuelson's Revealed Preference Theory. Boston: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar