Friday, July 18, 2003

More on Mirowski Posted here Friday, July 18, 2003 at 4:11:17 PM       There are several courageous parts to Mirowski. He sees the combination of the shift from equilibrium theory to thermodynamics to control mechanisms as ideology and pragmatics for ww2 control science, leading to post ww2 cold war thinking (out of mechanized game theory), along with the mathematizing of economics, social science, genetics.. his political analysis of the key players (and their insanity or depression) is amazing for the level of detail and passion, and the always experimental Joycian use of language.   The book is not just about economic ideas, it is about institutions, power, money, careers, the confabulation of governance with control mechanisms,and the fatful impact on all of us when the market becomes a single machine, and humans have to adapt.     He says the human-machine interface problem is solved by equating human with rational with math with mechanical, therefore the human-machine interface is reducible to a machine machine problem. the computer as an ensemble of programs that get results let economics avoid Godel's problem in the calculability of market equilibria, and allow economic experimental science to replace humans with computers. He raises the issue of how socialist planning and economic machinery are really the same thing. The introductory chapter is playful but hardly the guts of the book.   He gives lots of credit to others, and his strategy is to be an economic historian who brings his history up to the moment; at which point he becomes a theoretician with productive possibilities, and hence a factor in the history he writes.   ********