Abstract

A certain genre of physics or mechanistic metaphors began to appear in early modern economic discourse as abstract representations of basic economic phenomena. By the nineteenth century, the intellectual movement known as the "marginalist revolution" reified these metaphors into a consolidated epistemological tradition. Consequently, most of the analytical constructs and methods that came to be used in neoclassical economic theory were appropriated from physics. The physico-mechanistic tradition has been subjected to rigorous criticism; most significantly from Thorstein Veblen, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and Philip Mirowski. ;In essence, Veblen attributed the ascent of physico-mechanistic representation in early modern and neoclassical discourse to a mechanistic epistemology or "habit of thought." This "habit," manifest in comparative statics methodology, was fashioned within a cultural context that had been overdetermined by the pervasiveness of machine processes in industry. Influenced by Darwinian Evolutionism, Veblen charged that neoclassical economics was hopelessly anachronistic and unable to address the modern exigencies of evolutionary growth and change in economics. Georgescu-Roegen contended that physico-mechanistic representation in social theory implies that all social phenomena are non-evolutionary and analytically reducible to the simple locomotion of inert particles in space. He made evident the contradiction that this logic suggests economic processes are reversible and could begin with consumption and end with production. Moreover, this assertion of reversibility would then preclude the development of a concept of scarcity: a cornerstone concept in neoclassical economics. Mirowski challenges Veblen's contention that the physico-mechanistic habit of economic thought was fashioned out of a mechanistic cultural context. Rather he points to a "higher plane of synthesis" in which ontological parallels ostensibly exist between economic and physical phenomena. ;This dissertation broadens the profile of these critiques by contributing a socio-political dimension to the explanation of the early modern origins of the physico-mechanistic type of representation as an epistemic practice. This dissertation demonstrates that the early modern rise of physico-mechanistic representation in economic discourse emerged as an intellectual expedient that served the interests of the rising entrepreneurial class, particularly in early modern England