More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics)

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

If you want more analysis than "More Heat" had.......2006-04-19

Go read A book he wrote earlier, Against Mechanism. Its sad and time wasting that I have to put up reading through reviews with negative comments based on untrue statements.

Great synthesis, shaky execution.......2006-02-10

This is a work of prodigious scholarship and imaginative synthesis. Mirowski sifted through a tremendous amount of historical material, and approached it with great creativity. He makes an excellent prima facie case that even late 20th Century neoclassical economics is based on an early form of 19th Century thermodynamics -- the way it was before formulation of the Second Law (the one about entropy).

I came at this with more background in physics than in economics (which isn't saying much). I found the history of the principle of the conservation of energy (Ch. 2) fascinating in its own right. For its concise treatment of that topic, this book deserves to be better-known in the "physics-physics" (as distinguished from econophysics) community. As for Prof. McCauley's comment in an earlier Amazon review that Mirowski is confusing potential energy with the action as the appropriate analogue to utility, my impression was that this error isn't unique to Mirowski, but was made by at least some of the economists whose work he is critiquing (e.g. Irving Fisher).

I give this four stars, though, because of some genuine weak points.

First, Mirowski spills much ink faulting economists because they use a physics metaphor that's outdated, but relatively little on the question of empirical justification (or lack thereof) for using any physics metaphor at all. More discussion of this point would have been helpful.

Second, Mirowski's discussion of physics is at times very tentative, like a student who copies stuff into a term paper without understanding it fully, but hoping that he can sort of fake his way through. E.g., he refers to the definition of a curl of a function as a condition (when the condition he means is that the curl = 0), and twice to an exact differential as an "exact differential equation" when no equation is stated; he throws around frequent references to the Lagrangian without ever mentioning its familiar form as the difference between kinetic and potential energy (T-V); and although he includes some equations in his discussion of general relativity, he neither explains his notation nor seems to be sure of what the equations represent.

Finally, his writing style is often pompous and overly ornate. In the early part of the book he seems to have been possessed by the spirits of the 18th and 19th Century writers he's discussing. (I was amazed to learn that he's a Baby Boomer who was still in his 30s when he wrote this book.) He adopts a more entertaining and sarcastic tone when he gets to the neoclassical economists, especially in his take on P. Samuelson near the end of the book. But too often he sounds like a too-clever college student. It makes for an unfortunate contrast to the depth and originality of his argument.

Ideal versus real is the heart of this book.......2005-12-21

First off, the problem with this book is that people jump to conclusions too quickly. If I say that discrete math is not the same as continuous math, yet I go on to point out that the Z-Transform is analogous to the LaPlace Transform, there is an inherent ambiguity, a diaelectric, that seems contradictory but makes sense: all models are just that, models to reality. And reality cannot be modeled exactly (even the Theory of Relativity has flaws, which physicists are exploring today). In medicine for example, Grey's Anatomy, a medical textbook, has been criticized for showing a 'perfect' anatomy that does not in fact exist in nature. Analogously, the old argument about which classical statute was 'better': classical Greek or Roman? Ideal or 'real'? (and if 'real', whose 'real'; the recent statute in Trafalger square showing a paraplegic pregnant woman comes to mind)?

The point being that classical economics is not perfect, nor is it flawed--it just is. Come up with a better model, and the economic world will beat a path to your doorstep.

BTW, I've not read this book. Please recommend this review if it's been helpful.

Baloney.......2005-09-12

I bought this book with high hopes. I found, to my disappointment, that it is baloney. Poorly written -reminscent of travel literature in which every noun is preceded by at least one adjective - and incompetent. If anything the author claims is true, he has not demonstrated it. It is just a meaningless polemic.

The attacks on P. Samuelson and J.M.Keynes are incorrect.......2005-05-18

Mirowski's(M)book correctly points out that Samuelson's attempt to model economics "as if" it was the physics of Boltzmann and Gibbs fails to incorporate the 20th century physics of Einstein(the special theory of relativity(1904) and the general theory of relativity(1915)).However,if Samuelson had discovered the special nature of neoclassical economics,then he,and not John Maynard Keynes,would have been the greatest economist of the 20th century.Mirowski generally is correct that the economics profession has been too engrossed in the advanced Newtonian physics of the 1870-1900 time period.Of course,it is this type of physics that Samuelson was taught in his engineering physics courses when he was a student in the early 1930's(the same conclusion holds for this reviewer in the early 1970's).Unfortunately,Mirowski,instead of correctly pointing out that,despite Samuelson's great technical skills and ingenuity,such an approach could only yield special conclusions(Samuelson did point out that neoclassical theory is strictly limited to an analysis of points lying on the boundary of the static and dynamic production possibilities curves in his principles textbook),appears to come very close to claiming that Samuelson is a scientific fraud .Mirowski's claims are simply false. The second major problem with this book is in its assessment of Keynes's General Theory(GT;1936).Every statement about Keynes and the General Theory in this book is either an error of omission or an error of commission.Mirowski's knowledge of Keynes's mathematical modeling approach in chapters 20 and 21 of the GT is nonexistent.Mirowski's reliance on the error filled commentaries of the mathematically and economically illiterate,inept,and innumerant accountant,Hugh Townshend,whom Mirowski describes as"...a spectacularly perceptive critic..."(Mirowski,p.411)means that he has absolutely no idea of what Keynes is doing.On pp.261-262 of the GT,Keynes gives,not once but twice,the sufficient macroscopic optimality condition required for there to be no involuntary unemployment.It is that the marginal propensity to spend must equal 1.Unless this condition is met,no amount of wage and price flexibility ,even if instantaneous and simultaneous in all markets,will have any effect.Formally ,the mpc must equal 1.If the capital stock is not at an optimal level,then the mpc+mpi=1=mpc+mps condition is required,where mpc is the marginal propensity to spend on consumption goods,mpi is the marginal propensity to spend on investment goods,and mps is the marginal propensity to save.In chapters 20 and 21,Keynes derives this condition from the ground up,using a microfoundations of firms/industries operating under conditions of pure competition.This condition,which any competent mathematician can derive,is that w/p=mpl/(mpc+mpi),where mpl is the aggregated marginal product of labor.If mpc+mpi <1,involuntary unemployment will automatically exist.Keynes demonstrated that the capitalist system is ,in fact, a system of multiple,stable equilibria.Due to the ignorance of Mirowski, concerning Keynes's Einsteinian revolution in economics,his explicit unsupported attack on P. Samuelson,and his implicit attack ,again unsupported,on John Maynard Keynes,I can't recommend the purchase of this book unless it undergoes a complete revision,concentrating on the deficiencies of modeling economics on late 19th century Newtonian physics only.Mirowski could have written a 5-star book.Instead,he mixs his correct assessment of the misguided attempts of the economics profession to model economics as if it were physics with a series of unsupported attacks on Samuelson and Keynes.

More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics: Physics as Nature's Economics. (book reviews): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues

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More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics: Physics as Nature's Economics. (book reviews): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues
William Waller
Manufacturer: Association for Evolutionary Economics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B00092I5MY
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Economic Issues, published by Association for Evolutionary Economics on September 1, 1991. The length of the article is 1254 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics: Physics as Nature's Economics. (book reviews)
Author: William Waller
Publication: Journal of Economic Issues (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 1991
Publisher: Association for Evolutionary Economics
Volume: v25 Issue: n3 Page: p863(4)

Article Type: Book Review

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More Heat Than Light: Economics As Social Physics Physics As Nature's Economics

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More Heat Than Light: Economics As Social Physics Physics As Nature's Economics
Philip Mirowski
Manufacturer: Cambridge Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KX87B6

Book Description

Written in the midst of World War II after its author emigrated to America, "The Sea and the Mirror" is not merely a great poem but ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of Shakespeare's final play in the twentieth century. As W. H. Auden told friends, it is "really about the Christian conception of art" and it is "my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to be Shakespeare's." This is the first critical edition. Arthur Kirsch's introduction and notes make the poem newly accessible to readers of Auden, readers of Shakespeare, and all those interested in the relation of life and literature--those two classic themes alluded to in its title.

The poem begins in a theater after a performance of The Tempest has ended. It includes a moving speech in verse by Prospero bidding farewell to Ariel, a section in which the supporting characters speak in a dazzling variety of verse forms about their experiences on the island, and an extravagantly inventive section in prose that sees the uncivilized Caliban address the audience on art--an unalloyed example of what Auden's friend Oliver Sachs has called his "wild, extraordinary and demonic imagination."

Besides annotating Auden's allusions and sources (in notes after the text), Kirsch provides extensive quotations from his manuscript drafts, permitting the reader to follow the poem's genesis in Auden's imagination. This book, which incorporates for the first time previously ignored corrections that Auden made on the galleys of the first edition, also provides an unusual opportunity to see the effect of one literary genius upon another.

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Through A Liquid Mirror

Manufacturer: Editions Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Other Oceans

ASIN: 0915013185

Book Description

A RARE AND gifted photographer; Levin takes the reader on journeys through underwater landscapes from the waters of the Hawaiian Islands to Costa Rica and Micronesia. Levin's photographs have appeared in magazines and books including Kalaupapa, A Portrait and Kaho`olawe, Na Leo o Kanaloa. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Wayne Levin has photographs in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, and the Hawai`i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts

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Starting out only to spend a week on the Severn River, the author ends up 1 year later sailing out onto the Black Sea in an 11 foot dinghy. Using only sails and oars, he crossed the English Channel, 3000 miles of canals, rivers, and sea.

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A Charming, Unique Story of a Strange Voyage in a Small Boat.......2007-09-11

Sandy Mackinnon sets out from Shropshire in a tiny sailboat and sails and rows himself and his small boat across England, across the Channel, and across the canals and rivers of Europe to the Black Sea.

This is a fascinating journey and Mackinnon is a brilliant and charming storyteller. Although his voyage involves many privations and even humiliations, he is always optimistic, happy, and carefree--well, almost always. Mackinnon's joy and love of adventure, people, and the outdoors is highly infectious. No one will come away from reading this book with anything less than a lighter heart and a brighter outlook on life and its tribulations. Jack de Crow is witty, entertaining, and edifying. It is one of the best sailing adventure books that I have ever read and I have read very many. I highly recommend this book to every reader whether or not you are a sailor or boater. You don't need to know anything about boats or sailing to fully enjoy this wonderful book.

I have one important and heavy dissatisfaction with the book that I must air. I almost broke ranks and would have been the first reviewer to give it fewer than five stars. Mackinnon from start to finish depends on the kindness of strangers to get him through tough spots. His journey, and even his life, is saved several times by other boaters or people along the shore who give him shelter, a tow, make repairs for him, etc. etc. He simply would not have gotten more than a few miles on his own. Of course, this is part, and a central part, of the whole story and journey--trusting to your luck and to the unanticipated and unpaid assistance of strangers. Mackinnon is basically a good natured and kind hearted screw-up. He really doesn't know what he is doing or how to do it, but goes on anyway. Well this makes for a good story as Mackinnon recognizes--no screw-ups, no stories.

But I favor a tradition that values self-reliance at least in things nautical. A watery voyage requires proper craft, charts, equipment in good order, and the ability to navigate and conduct the voyage on one's own. The only excuse for seeking or accepting help from others is dire and unavoidable life-threatening emergency. Mackinnon violates these basic principles of boating, often to his peril, sometimes to the peril of others. I cannot respect this. I believe that Mackinnon should not have made this voyage, that he was morally irresponsible, and that despite the wonderful book that resulted, the overall effect may be detrimental.

One other minor problem with the book is that readers should be aware that there are many many references to English children's literature and other works that are obscure and will not be familiar, and there are no notes or explanations. This comes off as a bit pretentious and puzzling and somewhat diminished my enjoyment of Jack de Crow.

Sometimes Mackinnon can be insensitive. He glows over the beauty and wealth of Vienna--Europe's greatest city (his description). Mackinnon describes with excessive enthusiasm Vienna's glorious history, but never mentions the most important event in Vienna's history--the anything but glorious Kristallnacht. I quote from Wikipedia: "Events in Austria were no less horrendous. Of the entire Kristallnacht only the pogrom in Vienna was completely successful. Most of Vienna's 94 synagogues and prayer-houses were partially or totally destroyed. People were subjected to all manner of humiliations, including being forced to scrub the pavements whilst being tormented by their fellow Austrians, some of whom had been their friends and neighbours." I find it hard to share his insensitive enthusiasm for Vienna.

But in the end I suppose that Mackinnon is some sort of genius, a genuine free spirit, and true eccentric and cannot be held to the same standards as the rest of us.

A marvellous little book - meant to be shared........2007-06-13

A friend shared this book with me, hoping I'd enjoy it as much as he did. And I did. Being familiar with the country and the people - but not the rivers, I loved every mile of Jack De Crow's journey, laughing at almost every page at the impossible conditions that Mackinnon found himself in. As I knew they would, Mackinnon and Jack De Crow rose above it all.

I grew to love that little boat. In turn I shared with friends and family.

personal challange at its best.......2006-02-23

If you like sailing small craft and mini-crusiers and camping out, you will love this book. Most entertaining, humorous and well written.....good work Jim McKinnon !

A Wonderful Adventure!.......2005-08-25

This is my favorite sailing book. The combination of humor, insight, warmth, fascinating places, interesting people expertly sketched, odd experiences, wrecks, near death experiences, coupled with the pure joy of traveling by water, make for a very memorable book. Not only is it hard to put down once begun, it is hard not to immediately restart once finished.

A Classic is Born!.......2003-08-12

"Sandy" Mackinnon tells a tale of nautical adventure with a style that reads like a delightful mix of Jerome K. Jerome, Jean Shephard, and Monty Python. This books is so very English, though Mackinnon is Australian- it is told with love, warmth, wisdom, humanity, and with prose as crisp as Beaujolais and warm as old port. This is a very FUNNY book, but also life affirming without being pretentious. Once you start this book you will want to keep rowing through the pages as the author travels along the great rivers of Europe from Wales to Romania. This book is definitely a new classic, and ranks up there with The Saga of Cimba and Alone in the Caribbean as one of the three most evocative nautical travelogues ever written. A genuine treasure- and pleasure.

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The Mirror of the Sea
Joseph Conrad
Manufacturer: Marlboro Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0910395349

Derek Jarman and Lyric Film: The Mirror and the Sea

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The Scripture of Lyric Film

Derek Jarman and Lyric Film: The Mirror and the Sea
Steven Dillon
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0292702248

Book Description

As a sensitive and intelligent look at Jarman's films, Dillon's book is essential reading, and offers a compelling examination of the life and work of one of hte cinema's most gifted artists, who created a new world for himself and his peers, a world of light, reflection, and desire.

— Film Quarterly

"Steven Dillon's rich, expansive book may be the definitive treatment of the work of Derek Jarman. . . . The book is well researched, well written, theoretically informed, and remarkably perceptive of the range and feeling in Derek Jarman's films."

—James Morrison, York University, Toronto, author of Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors

Derek Jarman was the most important independent filmmaker in England during the 1980s. Using emblems and symbols in associative contexts, rather than conventional, cause-and-effect narrative, he created films noteworthy for their lyricism and poetic feeling and for their exploration of the gay experience. His style of filmmaking also links Jarman with other prominent directors of lyric film, including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet.

This pathfinding book places Derek Jarman in the tradition of lyric film and offers incisive readings of all eleven of his feature-length films, from Sebastiane to Blue. Steven Dillon looks at Jarman and other directors working in a similar vein to establish how lyric films are composed through the use of visual imagery and actual poetry. He then traces Jarman's use of imagery (notably mirrors and the sea) in his films and discusses in detail the relationship between cinematic representations and sexual identity. This insightful reading of Jarman's work helps us better understand how films such as The Last of England and The Garden can be said to cohere and mean without being reduced to clear messages. Above all, Dillon's book reveals how truly beautiful and brilliant Jarman's movies are.

Customer Reviews:

The Scripture of Lyric Film.......2006-03-21

Reading Dillon on film is like reading god on religion. To call it insightful would be a gross understatement. Highly, highly recommended.

A Personal Record and A Mirror of the Sea: Mirror of the Sea (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

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A Personal Record and A Mirror of the Sea: Mirror of the Sea (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Joseph Conrad
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Caliban (Major Literary Characters)

Manufacturer: Chelsea House Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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Book Description

Caliban, of Shakespeare's The Tempest, has been critically viewed as a rejection of the uniformity of the human race to his enslavement being seen as a natural inheritance of portions of the human race. This title allows you to study this truly original character.

Caliban is part of the Major Literary Characters series, edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. This series is the only major collection of criticism on widely studied fictional figures from world literature, bringing together a diverse array of the finest critical writing from around the world. Each volume includes Harold Bloom's essay "The Analysis of Character" and introductory essays on title characters.

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6 Titles By Michaels - Greygallows - Sea King's Daughter - Someone in the House - Be Buried in the Rain - Dancing Floor - Smoke and Mirrors
Elizabeth Peters writing as Barbara Michaels
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Michaels, Barbara | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Horror | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: B000MUW54M

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6 massmarket paperback Titles By Barbara Michaels - Greygallows - Sea King's Daughter - Someone in the House - Be Buried in the Rain - Dancing Floor - Smoke and Mirrors

Agent Based Simulation Seas Evaluation of DoDAF Architecture

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Agent Based Simulation Seas Evaluation of DoDAF Architecture

Manufacturer: Storming Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound
ASIN: 1423516656

Product Description

This is a AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSONAFB OH report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A199224. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: With Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems being deeply rooted in the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) structure, it is necessary for combat models to capture C4ISR effects in order to properly assess military worth. Unlike many DoD legacy combat models, the agent based model System Effectiveness and Analysis Simulation (SEAS) is identified as having C4ISR analysis capabilities. In lieu of requirements for all new DoD C4ISR weapon systems to be placed within a DoD Architectural Framework (DoDAF), investigation of means to export data from the Framework to the combat model SEAS began. Through operational, system, and technical views, the DoDAF provides a consistent format for new weapon systems to be compared and evaluated. Little research has been conducted to show how to create an executable model of an actual DoD weapon system described by the DoDAF. In collaboration with Systems Engineering masters student Captain Andrew Zinn, this research identified the Aerospace Operation Center (AOC) weapon system architecture, provided by the MITRE Corp., as suitable for translation into SEAS. The collaborative efforts lead to the identification and translation of architectural data products to represent the Time Critical Targeting (TCT) activities of the AOC. A comparison of the AOC weapon system employing these TCT activities with an AOC without TCT capabilities is accomplished within a Kosovo-like engagement (provided by Space and Missile Center Transformations Directorate).

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