Mirowski

[egglesto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Brian Eggleston)]

I have (with some difficulty) stayed out of the Mirowski (silly or
scintilant?) debate.  Surely, Mirowski's work is NOT silly.

In the recent edited volume by Neil deMarchi (_Non-natural Social
Science_) mentioned earlier by me (and I believe also by Jamie) is
a paper by D. Wade Hands which addresses conservation, integrability
etc. in Mirowski's MHTL.  Some quotations

"...while Mirowski's argument that Walrasian prices form a conservative
vector field does not stand up to close analysis, it is possible to find
support for a weaker version of his basic claim." p. 124

"If prices were redefined to be 'compensated prices,' his argument
would go through." p. 129

Hands refers to Hotelling's 1932 JPE piece.  He notes (p. 128)
"Hotelling's paper is not only important because it demonstrates a
special case where Mirowski's arguments about utility would hold
exactly, it also provides additional support to Mirowski's more
general thesis that early neoclassical economists wanted--
sometimes wanted desparately--to treat utility as potential energy."

Hands is a philosophically sophisticated neoclassicist who
understands that there is something to Mirowski--even on
technical grounds.

Hands (like many others) thinks Mirowski's thesis (acutally
theses) is (are) overblown.  Silly?  Surely not.

Brian Eggleston