Three Vignettes on the State of Economic Rhetoric

TL;DR: In this article, a Bayesian simulation is constructed of people interacting and using probits to compare their rankings of alternatives to estimate the subjective probability i.) that others have the same tastes as them, and ii.), for each alternative, that this alternative is their best choice.

TL;DR: The roots of the feminist economics which has come, the 1990s, to be widely recognized as in a distinct field of economics are to be found in theoretical developments in both neoclassical economics and in feminist theory from around the 1960s.

TL;DR: The authors presents examples of economists pressing methodologies on students and professional colleagues without actually articulating, and thus exposing to critical examination, the methodological precepts being urged, such behavior has twisted economic research and doctrine.

TL;DR: McCloskey as discussed by the authors describes how economic discourse employs metaphor, authority, symmetry, and other rhetorical means of persuasion, showing economists to be human persuaders and poets of the marketplace, even in their most technical and mathematical moods.

Abstract: More Heat Than Light is a history of how physics has drawn some inspiration from economics and also how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value. It traces the development of the energy concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect upon the invention and promulgation of neoclassical economics. Any discussion of the standing of economics as a science must include the historical symbiosis between the two disciplines. Starting with the philosopher Emile Meyerson's discussion of the relationship between notions of invariance and causality in the history of science, the book surveys the history of conservation principles in the Western discussion of motion. Recourse to the metaphors of the economy are frequent in physics, and the concepts of value, motion, and body reinforced each other throughout the development of both disciplines, especially with regard to practices of mathematical formalisation. However, in economics subsequent misuse of conservation principles led to serious blunders in the mathematical formalisation of economic theory. The book attempts to provide the reader with sufficient background in the history of physics in order to appreciate its theses. The discussion is technically detailed and complex, and familiarity with calculus is required.

TL;DR: The history of physics envy can be found in this paper, where the authors discuss the history of the energy concept and its relationship with the field theory of value in political economy, and the corruption of the field theories of value and the retrogression to substance theories of values.

TL;DR: Galison as discussed by the authors provides excellent histories of three experimental episodes: the measurement of the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, the discovery of the mu meson, or muon, and discovery of weak neutral currents.