More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics 9780511559990, 0521350425, 9780521350426

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More heat than light

Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics General Editor: Professor Craufurd D. Goodwin, Duke University This series contains original works that challenge and enlighten historians of economics. For the profession as a whole it promotes a better understanding of the origin and content of modern economics. Other books in the series Don Lavoie: Rivalry and central planning: the socialist calculation debate reconsidered Takashi Negishi: Economic theories in a non-Walrasian tradition E. Roy Weintraub: General equilibrium analysis: studies in appraisal William J. Barber: From new era to New Deal: Herbert Hoover, the economists, and American economic policy, 1921-1933 Kyun Kim: Equilibrium business cycle theory in historical perspective Gerard M. Koot: English historical economics, 1870-1926: The rise of economic history and neomercantilism M. June Flanders: International monetary economics, 1870-1960: Between the classical and the neoclassical Mary S. Morgan: The history of econometric ideas E. Roy Weintraub, Stabilizing Dynamics: Constructing Economic Knowledge

More heat than light Economics as social physics: Physics as nature's economics Philip Mirowski Tufts University

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521426893 © Cambridge University Press 1989 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1989 First paperback edition 1991 Reprinted 1995, 1999 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data isbn 978-0-521-35042-6 Hardback isbn 978-0-521-42689-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

To the most profound economic philosophers of the 20th century: Thorstein Veblen Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen

As late as a week ago, such a phrase as "hopefully awaiting the gradual convergence of the physical sciences and the social sciences" would have provoked no more than an ironic tingle or two at the back of my neck. Now it howls through the Ponchitoula Swamp, the very sound and soul of despair. -Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Contents

Figures Acknowledgments

Page

1

The fearful spheres of Pascal and Parmenides

2

Everything an economist needs to know about physics but was probably afraid to ask: The history of the energy concept Energy before "energy" 12 Live force and dead force 16 The motive force of fire 23 The Laplacian Dream 26 Some mathematics of conservation principles 30 The "discovery" of the conservation of energy 35 What was discovered? 50 The energetics movement 53 Entropy: More heat than light 59 The awakening from the Laplacian Dream 66 The theory of relativity 77 Quantum mechanics 82 Who's afraid of the nonconservation of energy