Economist writes on forces affecting scholarship

Author: Michael O. Garvey

mirowskbig.jpg

“The Effortless Economy of Science?” by Philip Mirowski, Carl Koch Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, recently was published by Duke University Press.p. Mirowski argues that the relationships between science and economics should be reconsidered in light of recent changes in the organization and funding of scientific research in Western countries. Contending that neoclassical economic doctrines are inadequate to explain the social influences on the selection and support of research projects, he examines such topics as the social stabilization of quantitative measurement, the repressed history of econometrics, the social construction of the laws of supply and demand, and the gift economy.p. Bradley W. Bateman, Gertrude B. Austin Professor of Economics at Grinnell College, describes the book as “an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, history of economics, and science studies,” adding that Mirowski “shows why work in each of these fields can be better understood by looking through the lens of other fields.”p. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1990, Mirowski specializes in the history and philosophy of economics, evolutionary computational economics, the economics of science, science studies, and the history of the natural sciences. He also is the author of “Machine Dreams: Economics becomes a Cyborg Science” and “More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics” and co-editor, with Notre Dame colleague Esther-Mirjam Sent, of “Science Bought and Sold: The New Economics of Science.”p. _Contact: Philip Mirowski at 574-631-7580 or Philip.E.Mirowski.1@nd.edu _ p. __

TopicID: 7302