Energy and Economic Myths, Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, Elsevier Science & Technology, 1977. ISBN 0080210562
Georgescu-Roegen critiques the mechanistic basis for much economic theory (which predominantly focuses on the movement of goods — a state which, thermodynamically, appears as a reversible process — and one which leads, at least conceptually if not in fact to the infinite cycle from production to consumption). It would appear that our current situation is the result of that infinite cycle occurring in a locally finite system.
This book leads to:
More heat than light : economics as social physics, physics as nature’s economics, Mirowski, Philip, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN: 0521350425 (hardback)
and ends up at this reflection from Borges:
It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine laws — I translate: inhuman laws — which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.
In the introduction Mirowski inspires as he details his struggle to build a conceptual and actual bridge between physics and economics. Understanding that economics is an important dimensional descriptor of the techno-social system is a nice advance. Although the number of economists who have made this connection are few, and the bulk of the discipline are still mired in juggling abstractions. It’s important to realize that the abstracted metrics of economy are abstracted from something and that something is energized matter. He extends the argument, marking the parallel between the terms value in economics and energy in physics. And later, he develops the concept of energy as one critical to understanding economics, period. This is a good find indeed! And it might end up, by studying the principles of the conservation of energy too much and I will end up a conservative. (No chance of that, as no one ends up as anything but energy anyway…) Actually, bringing thermodynamics into the picture would radically change the nature and theories of market economics both on the right and on the left.
On pages 56-57 there is a symmetric coffee-colored ring, a primitive of a Rorschach test, and on 58-59, some bits of roll-your-own tobacco. The last record of being checked out was 1998. More than a decade ago. Not too much interest in these approaches within the traditional canon.
And later, on to the indeterminacy of human tendencies towards abstracted (but sometimes brilliant) reason, in describing his ideas on electromagnetic fields:
The substance here treated must not be assumed to possess any of the properties of ordinary fluids except those of freedom of movement and resistance to compression. It is not even a hypothetical fluid which is introduced to explain actual phenomena. It is merely a collection of imaginary properties which may be employed for establishing certain theorems in pure mathematics in a way more intelligible for many minds … I wish merely to direct the mind of the reader to mechanical phenomena which will assist him in understanding the electrical ones. All such phrases in the present paper are to be considered as illustrative, not explanatory. In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. — James Clerk Maxwell