Natural Images in Economic Thought
Markets Read in Tooth and Claw
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:29th Jul '94
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£165.00(9780521443210)
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