Oikonomia: On Metaphor, Science, and Natural Order

Walker, Jeremy

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-3936-7_2

Jeremy Walker²

832 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter offers an approach to the question of how economics and ecology, descendants of the pre-modern discourse of oikonomia, became incommensurable sciences. Durkheim, Mauss, Douglas, and Mirowski suggest that a given culture’s justification of the social order is reflected in and reproduced by its account of the natural order, this informs a discussion of the sociology of knowledge. Turning to philosophers of science (Kuhn, Duhem, Quine, Hesse) we consider the role of metaphor in constituting scientific concepts: from the positivists, who asserts that ‘laws of nature’ are timeless truths beyond language, to Nietzsche, who alerts us to the ubiquity of metaphor and the proximity of all knowledge to its ‘faded coinage’. In conclusion, it is proposed that machine metaphors are constitutive of the cosmology of thermoindustrial society.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 99.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Cited in: Müller, J. (2014). On conceptual history: rethinking modern European intellectual history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 75.
2.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
3.
Borges, J. (1964). The fearful sphere of Pascal. In Labyrinths: Selected stories & other writings. New Directions. For this approach I acknowledge debts to: Mirowski, P. (1989). More heat than light: economics as social physics, physics as nature’s economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.
4.
Samuelson, P. (1970). Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 9.
5.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 150.
6.
Kuhn (1962, p. 4).
7.
Fleck, L. ([1935] 2012). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8.
Beck, U. (1995). Ecological politics in an age of risk. Cambridge: Cambridge Polity Press.
9.
Wilson, E. O. (1999). Consilience: the unity of knowledge. Cleveland: Vintage, p. 2.
10.
Midgely, M. (2002). Science as salvation: a modern myth. London: Routledge, p. 14.
11.
Cited in Midgely (2002, p. 14).
12.
McCloskey, D. (1983). The rhetoric of economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 31, 434–461.
13.
Klamer, A. & Leonard, T. (1994). So what’s an economic metaphor? In P. Mirowski (Ed.), Markets read in tooth and claw: natural images in economic thought (pp. 20–51). Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, p. 21.
14.
Karier, T. (2010). Intellectual capital: forty years of the Nobel Prize in economics. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Solow, R. (1956). A contribution to the theory of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 70(1), 65–94.
16.
Mirowski, P. (1996, Oct 6). Ecology in the mirror of economics. History of Economics Society. http://www.eh.net/lists/archives/hes/oct-1996/0042.php. Accessed 9 Nov 2005.
17.
Stigler, G. (1984). Economics: the imperial science? Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 86(3), 301–313.
18.
Rifkin, J. (1998). The biotech century. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, p. 197.
19.
Durkheim, E. & Mauss, M. ([1903] 1963). Primitive classification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
Durkheim, E. (2001). The elementary forms of religious life. London: Oxford World Classics.
21.
Spencer, W. & Gillen, F. (1899). The native tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan.
22.
Walker, J. (2013). Worlds to endure: weathering disorder from Arnhem Land to Chicago. Global Networks, 13(3), 391–409.
23.
Douglas, M. (1973). Natural symbols. London: Penguin, p. 93.
24.
Douglas, M. (1970). Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. New York: Routledge.
25.
Douglas, M. & Wildavsky, A. (1983). Risk and culture: An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. University of California Press.
26.
Wildavsky, A. (1982). Pollution as moral coercion: culture, risk perception and libertarian values. Cato Journal, 2(1), 304–325. See p. 307.
27.
Mirowski, P. (1994). The realms of the natural. In P. Mirowski (Ed.), Natural images in economic thought: markets read in tooth and claw (pp. 451–483). New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 453.
28.
Mirowski (1994, p. 454).
29.
McKibben, B. (1990). The end of nature. London: Viking.
30.
Gentner, D. & Jeziorski, M. (1993). The shift from metaphor to analogy in Western science. In (Ed.) A. Ortony Metaphor and thought (pp. 447–480). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31.
Lakoff and Johnson (1987, p. 2).
32.
Cuddington, K. (2001). The ‘balance of nature’ metaphor and equilibrium in population biology. Biology and Philosophy, (16), 464. Weingart, P. & Massen, S. (1997). The order of meaning: the career of chaos as a metaphor. Configurations, 5(3), 463–520.
33.
Cited in Mirowski (1992, p. 278).
34.
Hesse, M. (1972). The explanatory function of metaphor. In Y. Bar-Hillel (Ed.), Logic, methodology, and philosophy of science (pp. 249–259). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
35.
Hesse, M. (1955). Science and the human imagination. New York: Philosophical Library, p. 88.
36.
Klamer and Leonard (1994, p. 35).
37.
Friedman, M. (1953). Essays in positive economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
38.
Klamer and Leonard (1994, p. 36).
39.
Boyd, R. (1993). Metaphor and theory change: What is metaphor for? In (Ed.) A. Ortony, Metaphor and thought (pp. 356–408). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
40.
Klamer and Leonard (1994, pp. 39–42).
41.
Nietzsche, F. (1979). Philosophy and truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s notebooks of the early 1870s. New Jersey: Humanities Press, pp. 84–89.
42.
Lakoff and Johnson (1987, p. 157).
43.
Marx, K. ([1908] 1972). Notes on machines. Economy & Society, 1(3), 244–254; Mumford, L. (1967). The myth of the machine: technics and human development. Michigan: Harcourt Brace.
44.
Hornborg, A. (2001). The power of the machine: global inequalities of economy, technology and environment. California: Altamira Press.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Climate Justice Research Centre Social & Political Sciences, School of Communication, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW, Australia
Jeremy Walker

Authors

Jeremy Walker
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeremy Walker .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Walker, J. (2020). Oikonomia: On Metaphor, Science, and Natural Order. In: More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3936-7_2

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3936-7_2
Published: 15 July 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-3935-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-3936-7
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics