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On Playing the Economics Trump Card in the Philosophy of Science: Why It Did Not Work for Michael Polanyi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Philip Mirowski
Philip Mirowski*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
*
†Department of Economics and Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556.
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Abstract

The failure of the attempt by Michael Polanyi to capture the social organization of science by comparing it to the operation of a market bears salutary lessons for modern philosophers of science in their rush to appropriate market models and metaphors. In this case, an initially plausible invisible hand argument ended up as crude propaganda for the uniquely privileged social support of science.

Type
Symposium: The Use of Economic Concepts in Contemporary Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S127 - S138
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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