[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 2 06:24:47 PST 2010


The "Physics envy" of Economics is well-known. Granted, all social sciences to one degree or another suffer from this, as they are the soft sciences who wish they weren't so ... soft. But in Economics it seems especially prominent.

I began as a Sociology major and I'll be honest, thanks to some of the particular/individual teachers I had, it opened ideological doors, but also introduced me to vocabulary like "Intersectionality" and "multiplicity of oppressions," and "subaltern," etc., - even "surplus value" - that folks outside academia - to whom these terms referred, btw - has had zero impact in my relating to people, once as a hopefully organizer for the IWW. None of hose terms mattered. The meaning might have, in a backdrop sort of way, but I wasn't fucking speaking like that to folks. I switched from Sociology to Social Work because it at least seemed like APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCE rather than just abstract "analysis, which what most social sciences seem to offer, Endless analysis, no attempts at on-the-ground application of the fruits of such analysis. Just endless running commentary on how fucked stuff is. It felt really pathetic just commenting on how shitty this or that is

yet not having an applied social science methodology, a plan of attack, at least, to actually ADDRESS such issue.

Just the term "Social physicist" makes me cringe. There is no such thing. It is an area that simply isn't quantifiable and/or qualifiable. I remember an older organizing saying he wished he could finder a computer program in which he could plug in the exact elements that would produce for him the proper formul for revolution in the USA. Even then it seemed eird. now it seems laughable.

The "left," such as it is (hello Carroll Coxshaft) always approaching "the working class" in this fetishistic way that I think even weirds them out and seems manipulative. Of course, elected officials, aka lieutenants of business in DC, manipulate them daily. Yet there is something about face to face, rank and file attempts at organization that rankles a lot of Americans - or so it seems. I wish I had the answer. Lord knows we need one.

-B.

Vincent Clarke wrote:

"But what Mirowski is arguing is more than simply that some of the founders of neo-classicism borrowed a few physics metaphors. If Mirowski is correct then many of the mathematical instruments wielded by neo-classicists were taken over from the nascent field of energy physics."



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