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A Review of Philip Mirowski's More Heat Than Light: Economics As Social Physics, Physics As Nature's Economics.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Pp

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A Review of Philip Mirowski's More Heat Than Light: Economics As Social Physics, Physics As Nature's Economics.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Pp June 1991 Book Review Column Mirowski's Screed: A Review of Philip Mirowski's More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Pp. xii+ 450. $59.50 IBSN 0-521;.35042.. s. Kevin D. Hoover consistently uncharitable readings of almost University of California, Davis everyone- Veblen, Georgescu-Roegen and a few obscure figures in the history of economic More Heat Than Light! - that sums it up thought excepted. quite accurately. Alas, it will take more than I four words to convince the reader of the Mirowski's argument is about metaphor soundness of such a stark judgement. and the role of metaphorical exchanges in the Mirowski's book is a sustained .attack on development of physics and economics. In the the foundations of modem neoclassical development of energy physics, which is central economics. He gives a succinct statement of his to this book, accounting notions and notions of thesis: economy of action are borrowed from The only way to fully comprehend economics. Mirowski cites the suggestive value theory in economics is to situate it example of Joule, who may have gotten his wihin .. .. the metaphorical simplex of inspiration for his research into the mechanical energy, motion, body and value, and to equivalent of heat from the carefully maintained regard it as part and parcel of the same accounts of his family's brewery: energy was like structures that undergird Western money - the diligent bookkeeper had to account physics. [pp. 141-2) for every last tuppence. Mirowski maintains If true, this thesis has severe consequences for that economics readily borrowed from physics our understanding of the history of economic· as well, and, by the time of the rise of thought and for the methodology of economics. neoclassicism, the exchange was pretty much Beyond economics, Mirowski aims to one way from energy physics to economics. undennine the nexus between social theory and Mirowski visualizes the metaphorical the natural sciences. A key slogan runs: complex involved in these exchanges as a "Physical metaphors used to describe social triangular pyramid, with "energy" at its apex processes are spuriously grounded in the natural and· "motion," "body," and "value," at the phenomena" (p. 318). vertices of its base. In chapter 2 he reviews the I hold no special brief for neoclassical development of energy physics from the late economics. Throughout his book, Mirowski 18th century through the early 20th century as scatters many telling criticisms of the details of elaborations of one or other of the metaphorical neoclassicism and of the inappropriate imitation relations of the three faces of this pyramid. of the physical sciences by economists. He offers Despite its stylistic infelicities, this is the most some attractive ideas for the development of the fascinating part of the book, even for someone discipline. Yet, reading this book gave me a who has heard the story before. slowly rising feeling of outrage. Taken as a Mirowski argues that the notion of energy whole, it is an outrageous book: neither the and its associated conservation law were not history nor the methodology are persuasive; the simultaneously discovered as standard histories scholarship is often slapdash; the tone is report. First, each of the putative discoverers, intemperate; and the style is often obnoxious. Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz and Colding, were Mirowski's hatred of neoclassical economi~ elaborating the metaphorical complex rather borders on the pathological: one sometimes than finding an "energy" that was out there wonders if his mother didn't run off with a independeritty of their own understandings - i.e., neoclassical economist, leaving little Phil bereft energy was not discovered. Second, the in the cradle. Mirowski strikes a flashy, bullying .. discoverers" were working on different faces of tone throughout the book, patronizing the the energy pyramid. This explains why, in reader, economists and physicists. He offers Mirowski's view, it did not occur to them that Junel991 CI:) t~ey were all doing the same thing The central problem for neoclassical . - m fact they were not. economics is that it failed to see that copying 'Boo(!l{tcJrL'W Mirowski then goes on to physics leads to absurdity. After the trace the development of the law of the protoenergetics stage, physics developed away conservation of energy and thermodynamics. By from substance accounts of energy toward field the end of the 19th century, it appeared that accounts. Conservation of energy can be physics was achieving a grand unification with expressed technica11y as the requirement that energy as the central concept. The energetics energy be represented by an irrotational movement associated with Ostwald began to conservative vector field. The characterization view energy as the key to everything. But then, of an economy as the simultaneous around the tum of the century, it an began to maximi:zation of utility functions subject to unravel. Planck and pthers attacked Ostwald as budget constraints is analogous to the field misunderstanding the basis of the existing formalisms of physics. Had economics energy physics; and that physics itself began to developed its metaphorical borrowing from disintegrate. Quantum mechanics and the physics along the same lines as physics itself ·theory of relativity fractured the hard-won unity developed, it would have been forced to impose of physics, and the law of the conservation of the conservation law in the form of an energy was transmuted into symmetry principles irrotational vector field. But then the analogue that were specifically tailored to different of the law of conservation of energy would state physical theories which no longer formed a that the sum of utility (analogo1,1s to potential unified whole. Not only had the conservation of energy) and expenditure (analogous to kinetic energy lost its overarching status, E = mc2 energy) would have to be conserved quantity. suggested that energy might not be conserved, But that is an economic absurdity; utility and but could be converted into matter and vice expenditure do not have the same dimensions. versa. Further elaborations of relativity theory Mirowski faults neoclassical economics for not suggested that the homely thought behind the exploring the complete implications of the law of the conservation of energy - nothing energy metaphor; and, because those comes from nothing - might be wrong: "It now implications are unsavory in the extreme, for appears possible that the universe is a free adopting the energy metaphor at all. lunch" (Mirowski, p. 392, quoting Guth 1983, p. Mirowski notes various physicists and 215). mathematicians who raised questions about the All economics, at least from the advent of appropriateness of the energy metaphor for mercantilism, was, in Mirowski's view, involved economics, and, particularly, about the in the elaboration of the same metaphorical counterpart to the law of the conservation of complex of energy/motion/body/value, But the energy. These took the form: are utility fields two-way st~t of metaphorical exchange integrable? He maintains that, after the turn of between physics and economics became the century, when these questions were not essentially a one-way street with the marginal satisfactorily answered, economists - in large revolution of the 1870s, and a divided highway measure because of their mathematical once physics itself lost its unity in the 20th incompetence - simply ignored the question of century. integrability for nearly thirty years. The sores of According to Mirowski (p.3), "..... the an inappropriate metaphor continued to fester. progenitors of neoclassical economic theory In the 1930s, an influx of engineers and boldly copied the reigning physical theories of . mathematicians raised mathematical the 1870s." He dubs this physics competence among economists to a new height. "protoenergetics." It is the energy physics that Integrability was rediscovered. Now, however, it developed out of rational mechanics before the was seen as an economically insigificant second law of thermodynamics introduced the technical point. Mirowski believes that this notion of the irreversibility of thermodynamic attitude was part of an elaborate shell game in processes. Mirowksi's claim is extremely strong: which the physics of protoenergetics continued '' ..... those neoclassicals did not imitate physics to drive the development of neoclassical in a desultory or superficial manner; no. they economic theory, while economists denied the copied their models mostly term for term and centrality of the physics metaphor for their own symbol for symbol, and said so'' (p.3). Of this discipline. For this charade · for· Mirowski claim. more anon. repeatedly questions the motives of . t.he 1 AO June 1991 economists involved Paul theory. "Ex nihilo fit nihil fit" was already Samuelson is held chiefly to blame. known to metaphysics when "economics" II referred to housekeeping and was beneath a No one can doubt that economists in the philosopher's contempt. 19th century, as well as before and after, looked The direct and conscious parallels drawn to physics as an inspiration for scientific between physics and neoclassical economics that economics, they borrowed its mathematics and Mirowski cities are invariably surrounded with found economic analogies for some of its .caveats noting that no analogy with physics will concepts, such as energy. Physics was a be exact in every detail. Jevons's clearest direct resplendent jewel in the crown of the modem borrowing from physics in his Theory of intellect. Other disciplines, not just economics, Political Economy is the discussion of the law of sought to stand in the reflected glory of its the lever. In context, however, it is evident that scintillating light Mirowski maintains, his point has to do with what sorts of however, that physics and economics were mathematics can be used in certain classes of bound together more tightly than this suggests: problems, and not with precise analogies both were elaborations of the single between levers and economical systems.
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