Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science [Paperback]

Philip Mirowski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2002 | ISBN-10: 9780521775267 | ISBN-13: 978-0521775267 | Edition: 1st

This is the first cross-over book in the history of science written by an historian of economics, combining a number of disciplinary and stylistic orientations. In it Philip Mirowshki shows how what is conventionally thought to be "history of technology" can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. His analysis combines Cold War history with the history of the postwar economics profession in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with the content of such abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. He links the literature on "cyborg science" found in science studies to economics, an element missing in the literature to date. Mirowski further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents found in the larger culture, arguing that neoclassical economics has surreptitiously participated in the desconstruction of the integral "Self." Finally, he argues for a different style of economics, an alliance of computational and institutional themes, and challenges the widespread impression that there is nothing else besides American neoclassical economic theory left standing after the demise of Marxism. Philip Mirowski is Carl Koch Professor of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame. He teaches in both the economics and science studies communities and has written frequently for academic journals. He is also the author of More Heat than Light (Cambridge, 1992) and editor of Natural Images in Economics (Cambridge, 1994) and Science Bought and Sold (University of Chicago, 2001).

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As history, Machine Dreams is a remarkable achievement. It is hard to imagine a historian who was not an economist (as Mirowski is) being able to encompass the economics of the second half of the 20th century in its diversity and technicality." London Review of Books

"Phil Mirowski reminds me of an investigative reporter with a world-class story. He has gone straight to the heart of a really interesting problem--the emergence of economics' modern era in the crucible of World War II--and come back with a detailed account of events at The Cowles Commission and the RAND Corporation. It is news, the best that can be said quickly. It is opinion: cyborg economics (meaning purely cognitive economics) is not the sort of science Mirowski wants to see. And it is sensationally interesting. You don't have to agree with his conclusions to recognize that Mirowksi is the most imaginative and provocative writer at work today on the recent history of economics. Machine Dreams is a real-time cousin to The Difference Engine .". David Warsh, The Boston Globe

"Machine Dreams is an astonishing performance of synthetic scholarship. Mirowski traces the present-day predicaments of economic theory to its intellectual reformulation and institutional restructuring by military funding and in the crucibles of World War II and the Cold War. His demonstration that the mathematical economics of the postwar era is a complex response to the challenges of "cyborg" science, the attempt to unify the study of human beings and intelligent machines through John von Neumann's general theory of automata, is bound to be controversial. His critics, however, will have to contend with a breathtakingly wide range of published and unpublished evidence in fields ranging from psychology to operations research he presents. This noir history of economic thought will change its readers' understanding of twentieth century economics profoundly." Duncan Foley, New School University

"In Machine Dreams the most exciting historian of economic thought of our time takes on one of the most fascinating themes of the intellectual history of the 20th century--the dream of creating machines that can think and how this has affected the social sciences. The result is an extraordinary book that deserves to be read by everyone interested in the social sciences." Richard Swedberg, University of Stockholm

Book Description

Machine Dreams recounts the story of how the computer came to transform the very content of American economics, and how the mathematician John von Neumann inadvertently became the most important thinker for the economics profession in the 20th century. The narrative crosses the two genres of the history of economic thought and World War II, arguing that the Second World War and the Cold War were central to the postwar rise of the neoclassical orthodoxy in America. The treatment concludes with reflections on the ways in which the computer will further transform economics in the 21st century.

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1st edition (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780521775267
• ISBN-13: 978-0521775267
• ASIN: 0521775264
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #990,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive and fun June 20, 2006

By A. J. Sutter

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

As you can see from the previous reviews, this is a book that provokes strong feelings. As usual that's often more a reflection on the reader than on the book. You'd never guess that this book is (by intention) very funny. But it is.

Mirowski has written elsewhere that John von Neumann is the "hero" of this book. Von Neumann thought neoclassical economics was nonsense, and made no secret of that opinion. As a result, many post-war American economists have tried to write him out of history. One fruit of their effort was the beatification of John Nash as the patron saint of game theory, a process that began in the 1980s.

According to this book, the irony is that those same economists have "followed the trajectory" of von Neumann's thinking for the last five decades, even if they wouldn't acknowledge it. Through the 1970s or so they relied on fixed-point theorems and other nonconstructive proof techniques (von Neumann in the 1930s). From the 1980s to now, they have relied on game theory (von Neumann for a few years in the 1940s). Recently, they have begun to rely more on computers, particularly to study "agent"-type automata (von Neumann from the mid-1940s to the end of his life). And, as for von Neumann, military funding has been an important factor throughout this development.

Actually, this isn't "the" irony, but just one of many. If you've ever had any suspicions that neoclassical economics was kind of a crock, you'll find them well-supported in this impressively well-researched book. (Some highlights include the misplaced aspiration to axiomatize economic theory, the impossibility of computing Nash equilibria, ditto for Walrasian general equilibria, the socialist antecedents of "free market" jingoism, the bounded usefulness of V. Smith's market experiments, and much else.) It may be a bit of a stretch to say that the book reads like a thriller, but the fun of uncovering some additional bit of intellectual dishonesty with each turn of the page did keep my attention.

For over 500 pages, this story is told with a sustained, righteous and gleeful sarcasm. Such a tone may sound tiresome, but based on the evidence Mirowski brings forward - much of it the neoclassicals' own words - it struck me as quite justifiable. And I laughed a lot.

However, be aware that this book is less self-contained than Mirowski's earlier book, "More Heat Than Light". Even if you've read that book first (which I recommend, especially if you're not an economist), you should have at least a Scientific American-level of acquaintance with theory of computation, a bit more math-intensive experience with game theory (like a few chapters of Myerson -- not that "Machine Dreams" has any equations, but the math is often alluded to), and smidgens of Arrow, Debreu, Herb Simon, Vern Smith and Kahneman & Tversky. You should also know "who" Bourbaki is and have some experience of the Bourbakist style, because it's taken for granted that you already do.

There are a few quirks, but nothing so dire as what other reviewers have mentioned. For example, the "Newtonian" issue appears maybe in one offhand comment. More frequent, no less irritating, and just as utterly inconsequential is the use of the word "thermodynamics" when "statistical mechanics" would have been more appropriate. (None of those physics gaffes is important to the main theme.) An august group of manuscript readers allowed the author repeatedly to use "phenomena" and "automata" as singular nouns in the first two-thirds of the book. And throughout, there are ironic allusions and silly puns based on pop culture references, which is fine; but those of you born after 1965 may miss a lot of them.

Maybe one day, some econ undergrad as yet unborn will write a senior honors thesis glossing those many dozens of goofy remarks. For its multitude of remarks both insightful and trenchant, this book deserves to continue to be read at least until that time.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Undecidable econ vs. Perfect Rationality June 18, 2002

By Professor Joseph L. McCauley

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I've read about 250 pages and can recommend that anyone with an interest in economics and finance should read this fantastic book. The basis for the text are the contributions of Shannon, Turing, von Neumann, Wiener, Koopmans, Marshak, and Arrow. Mirowski tells us the main story of the interaction of the Cowles Commission with RAND, which Bernstein does not at all hint at in his Capital Ideas. Having praised the book, I will now concentrate mainly on a few points of disagreement. Undecidability should not be confused with noise in stochastic processes. Systems at the transition to chaos can define automata that can perform simple arithmetic. That 'cyborg' has it's origin in the physical sciences seems farfetched (the connection between Turing and physics is supposed to be via Maxwell's demon, but was Turing really motivated by the idea of Maxwell's demon?). Nonlinear dynamics and fractals ('chaos' and fractals) certainly did not evolve from cybernetics or 'system theory' ('system theory' was based at best on an awareness of equilibria and limit cycles of differential equations, and made vague, unjustifiable allusions to holism). Cybernetics cannot really be seen as the midwife of what is now loosely called 'complexity' either, rather, that (still undefined) field grew out of nonlinear dynamics, neural networks, computability theory and molecular biology. Mirowski is right that many scientists confuse simulations with experiment and observations. I have argued against this confusion in papers and books.

Mirowski paints an intriguing picture of (Gödel-influenced) von Neumann, RAND, researchers with awareness of information and computability limitations leading to agent-based modelling with some respect for empiricism on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, Arrow, the Cowles Commission and their later rejection of empirics, instead with emphasis on Bourbaki-style existence proofs leading to infinte demands on information requirements on Walrasian agents and noncomputable equilibria. We now know that agent-based modelling can easily lead to fat-tailed price distributions (as observed empirically), whereas in contrast the origin of the systematic head-in the-sand philosophy of the neo-classical economic theorists is made quite clear in this work. One can summarize the neo-clasical economic agent as follows: his dynamics are trivial (equilibrium, including Nash equilibria) but the information demands made on him to interact with other agents and locate an equilibrium point are impossible (noncomputable). Moreover, we now know that financial market statistics point toward the instability of Adam Smith's hand, so that the notion of dynamic equilibrium is complelety uninteresting so far as understanding markets is concerned.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Ur-text for "The Trap" February 1, 2010

By E. Heroux

Format:Paperback

The author, Mirowski, is interviewed repeatedly in the great documentary film, "The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom?" This BBC documentary was broadcast in 3 episodes in 2007. The British filmmaker Adam Curtis is perhaps more famous for other documentaries including _The Century of the Self_ and more recently _The Power of Nightmares_ about the war on terrorism. It is available on the Internet in reduced or compressed formats.

As Curtis clearly articulates the main thesis, _The Trap_ is about "how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom." That is, Mirowski is not only interviewed, but this particular book, _Machine Dreams_ is the key text informing much of Curtis's documentary. I'm not an economist, but I found the film so informative and hair-raising that I purchased Mirowski's book. The book equals the film in brilliance, though it doesn't reach quite as far as Curtis's more political argument about how the economic models got adopted into political programs, and hence led to the trap suggested in his title.

Hard to say whether the film helps to comprehend the book more or vice-versa the book helps to deepen the film. I'd say both.