Philip Mirowski (born 21 August 1951 in

Jackson, Michigan Jackson is the only city and county seat of Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 33,534, down from 36,316 at the 2000 census. Located along Interstate 94 and U.S. Route 127, it is approx ...

) is a

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

of economic thought at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main c ...

. He received a PhD in

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...

from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1979.

Career

In his 1989 book ''More Heat than Light'', Mirowski reveals a history of how

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

has drawn inspiration from economics and how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of

value Value or values may refer to: Ethics and social * Value (ethics) wherein said concept may be construed as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, associating value to them ** Values (Western philosophy) expands the notion of value beyo ...

. He traces the development of the

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of ...

concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect on the invention and promulgation of

neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...

, the modern orthodox theory. Mirowski's thesis has been challenged by Hal Varian and defended, with some reservations, by D. Wade Hands. ''Machine Dreams'' explores the historical influences of the military and the

cyborg A cyborg ()—a portmanteau of ''cybernetic'' and ''organism''—is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.

sciences on neoclassical economics. The neglected influence of

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest c ...

and his theory of

automata An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...

are key themes throughout the book. Mirowski claims that many of the developments in

in the 20th century, from

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...

to computational economics, are the unacknowledged result of von Neumann's plans for economics. The work expands Mirowski's vision for a computational economics, one in which various market types are constructed in a similar fashion to

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

generative grammar Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguisti ...

. The role of economics is to explore how various market types perform in measures of complexity and efficiency, with more complicated markets being able to incorporate the effects of the less complex. By complexity Mirowski means something analogous to

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

. Mirowski's criticism of game theory is noted by financial economist and historian

Peter L. Bernstein Peter Lewyn Bernstein (January 22, 1919 – June 5, 2009) was an American financial historian, economist and educator whose development and refinement of the efficient-market hypothesis made him one of the country's best known authorities in ...

. In his book ''Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste'', Mirowski concludes that neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth. Once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, information, markets, and government, it could no longer be falsified by anything as trifling as data from the "real" economy.

Books

As author

* ''Against Mechanism: Protecting Economics from Science.'' Totowa, N.J.:

Rowman & Littlefield Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing comp ...

, 1988. . * ''More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics''

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...

, 1989 * ''Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science'' Cambridge University Press, 2001 * ''The Effortless Economy of Science?'', Durham, NC:

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 ...

, 2004, (papers 463 pp.) * '' Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science'',

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...

, 2011 * ''Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown''

Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of '' New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...

, 2013 * ''The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: A History of Information and Knowledge in Economics'' (with E. Nik-Khah), Oxford University Press, 2017

As editor

* (editor) ''Edgeworth's Writings on Chance, Probability and Statistics'' (1994) * (editor) ''Natural Images in Economics: Markets Read in Tooth and Claw'' (1994) * (editor) ''The Collected Economic Works of

William Thomas Thornton William Thomas Thornton, CB (1813–1880) was a nineteenth-century economist, civil servant and author. Life William Thomas Thornton was born at Burnham, Buckinghamshire on 14 February 1813, the son of the merchant Thomas Thornton and Sophie Z ...

'' (1999) * (editor with E. Sent) ''Science Bought and Sold'' (2001) * (co-edited with R. van Horn and T. Stapleford) ''Building Chicago Economics: New Perspectives on the History of America’s Most Powerful Economics Program'' (2011) * * Philip Mirowski, Dieter Plehwe and

Quinn Slobodian Quinn Slobodian (born 1978) is a Canadian historian of modern Germany and international history who has been Marion Butler McLean Professor of the History of Ideas at Wellesley College since 2022. He previously was a Residential Fellow at the W ...

, Eds., (2020) ''Nine Lives of Neoliberalism'', London, New York: Verso, , (ebook versio

Notes

External links

Homepage of Philip Mirowski
* .
Review
by Steven N. Durlauf of Mirowski's book ''The Effortless Economy of Science?'' * S. Abu Turab Rizvi: ''Philip Mirowski as a Historian of Economic Thought''. In: Steven G. Medema, Warren J. Samuels (eds.): ''Historians of Economics and Economic Thought: The Construction of Disciplinary Memory''. Routledge, London/New York 2001, pp. 209–222. * Don Ross, ''The Effortless Economy of Science?'', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 60, Iss. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 659–65. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mirowski, Philip Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American philosophers University of Michigan alumni University of Notre Dame faculty Philosophers of science Historians of economic thought 1951 births American male non-fiction writers