The world in the model : how economists work and think / / Mary S. Morgan [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910462752003321
• Autore: Morgan Mary S.
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2012
• ISBN: 1-316-08850-2; 1-139-56381-5; 1-283-57512-4; 1-139-02618-6; 1-139-55050-0; 9786613887573; 1-139-55175-2; 1-139-55546-4; 1-139-54925-1; 1-139-55421-2
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xvii, 421 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Disciplina: 330.01/5195
• Soggetti: Economics - Mathematical models; Economists
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Cover; THE WORLD IN THE MODEL; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Figures, Tables, and Boxes; Preface; 1 Modelling as a Method of Enquiry; PART I: CHANGING THE PRACTICE OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE; 1. From Laws to Models, From Words to Objects; 2. The Naturalization of Modelling in Economics; 3. Practical Reasoning Styles; 3.i Modelling as a Style of Reasoning; 3.ii Modelling as a Reasoning Style in Economics; PART II: MAKING MODELS, USING MODELS; 4. Making Models to Reason With: Forms, Rules, and Resources; 4.i Giving Form; 4.ii Becoming Formal; 4.iii Reasoning Resources; 5. Modelling as a Method of Enquiry: The World in the Model, Models of the World6. Conclusion; 2 Model-Making: New Recipes, Ingredients, and Integration; 1. Ricardo, the "Modern" Economist?; 2. Ricardo, His ; Economy, and the Economy of His Day; 2.i David Ricardo, Esq.; 2.ii Economics Matters, Experimental Farming Matters; 3. Constructing Ricardo's Numerical Model Farm and Questions of Distribution; 3.i The Numbers in Ricardo's Principles and Experimental Accounts; 3.ii The Spade-Husbandry Debate; 4. Ricardo's Model Farm and Model Farming; 4.i Three Model Farms in One; 4.ii A Model Farm that Worked According to Ricardo's Economic Ideas4.iii A Model of an Individual Farm in the Period; 4.iv A Model Farm for the Whole Agricultural Sector; 5. Model-Making: Creating New Recipes; 5.i Ingredients; 5.ii Fitting Things Together: Integration and Reasoning Possibilities; 3 Imagining and Imaging: Creating a New Model World; 1. Introduction; 2. Acts of Translation or a New Way of World-Making?; 3. Making the Mathematical Economic World in Models; 4. The Artist's Space versus the Economist's Space; 5. The History of the Edgeworth Box Diagram - as Told by Itself; 5.i Edgeworth's Imagination and Image5.ii Pareto's Imagination and Images; 6. The World Newly Made in the Model: Questions of Representation?; 6.i Visualization; 6.ii Newness; 7. Seeing the World in the Model; 8. Conclusion; 4 Character Making: Ideal Types, Idealization, and the Art of Caricature; 1. Introduction; 2. Characterizing Economic Man: Classical Economists' Homo Economicus; 3. Concept Forming: Weber's Ideal Types and Menger's Human Economy; 4. Symbolic Abstraction: Jevons' Calculating Man; 5. Exaggerating Qualities: Knight's Slot-Machine Man; 6. Making a Cartoon into a Role Model: Rational Economic Man7. The Art of Caricature and Processes of Idealization; 8. Model Man's CV: De-Idealization and the Changing Roles of Economic Man; 5 Metaphors and Analogies: Choosing the World of the Model; 1. From Metaphors to Analogical Models; 2. The Newlyn-Phillips Machine; 3. The Machine's Inventors: Walter Newlyn and Bill Phillips; 4. Inventing the Newlyn-Phillips Machine; Step 1: Phillips chooses the analogy for his supply/demand model (early 1949); Step 2: Newlyn designs the blueprint for a monetary circulation machine (Easter 1949); Step 3: Phillips and Newlyn build the prototype Machine (Summer 1949)
• Sommario/riassunto: During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. This book will be of interest to economists and science studies scholars (historians, sociologists and philosophers of science). But it also aims at a wider readership in the public intellectual sphere, building on the current interest in all things economic and on the recent failure of the so-called economic model, which has shaped our beliefs and the world we live in.