Philip Mirowski

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Philip Mirowski (born 21 August 1951 in

economic thought at the University of Notre Dame. He received a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1979.[1]

Career

In his 1989 book More Heat than Light, Mirowski reveals a history of how physics has drawn inspiration from economics and how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value. He 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. Mirowski's thesis has been challenged by Hal Varian and defended, with some reservations, by D. Wade Hands.[2]

Machine Dreams explores the historical influences of the military and the

automata are key themes throughout the book. Mirowski claims that many of the developments in neoclassical economics in the 20th century, from game theory to computational economics, are the unacknowledged result of von Neumann's plans for economics. The work expands Mirowski's vision for a computational economics, one in which various market types are constructed in a similar fashion to Noam Chomsky's generative grammar. The role of economics is to explore how various market types perform in measures of complexity and efficiency, with more complicated markets being able to incorporate the effects of the less complex. By complexity Mirowski means something analogous to computational complexity theory in computer science.[citation needed] Mirowski's criticism of game theory is noted by financial economist and historian Peter L. Bernstein.[3]

In his book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, Mirowski concludes that neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth. Once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, information, markets, and government, it could no longer be falsified by anything as trifling as data from the "real" economy.[citation needed]

Books

As author

As editor

Notes

  1. ^ CV Archived 2008-10-07 at the Wayback Machine
  2. S2CID 145182239
    .
  3. OCLC 34411005
    .

External links

  • Homepage of Philip Mirowski
  • A long review of Machine Dreams at the Wayback Machine (archived May 27, 2009).
  • Review by
    Steven N. Durlauf
    of Mirowski's book The Effortless Economy of Science?
  • S. Abu Turab Rizvi: Philip Mirowski as a Historian of Economic Thought. In: Steven G. Medema, Warren J. Samuels (eds.): Historians of Economics and Economic Thought: The Construction of Disciplinary Memory. Routledge, London/New York 2001, pp. 209–222.
  • Don Ross, The Effortless Economy of Science?, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 60, Iss. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 659–65.
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