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The Technology of Analogical Models: Irving Fisher's Monetary Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Mary S. Morgan
Mary S. Morgan*
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam and London School of Economics
*
†Department of Economic History, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England.
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Abstract

Mary Hesse's well-known work on models and analogies gives models a creative role to play in science, which rests on developing certain analogical properties considered neutral between the two fields. Case study material from Irving Fisher's work (The Purchasing Power of Money, 1911), in which he used analogies to construct models of monetary relations and the monetary system, highlights certain omissions in Hesse's account. The analysis points to the importance of taking account of the negative properties in the analogies and to certain differences between “ready-made” analogies (models of systems based on existing analogical structures) and “designed” analogies (models built up from separate analogical features).

Type
Symposium: Models as Mediators
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. S304 - S314
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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Footnotes

‡

I gratefully acknowledge the many useful comments I have received when these case materials have been discussed on various occasions in Berlin, Lisbon, Vancouver, Edinburgh, Cleveland (PSA meeting), and in the Netherlands. I particularly thank the participants at the workshop on “Models as Mediators in the Practice of Economic Science,” held at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam in March 1996, especially Margaret Morrison, Marcel Boumans, and Nancy Cartwright. I thank the Rector at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin for the opportunity to work on this case material in 1995/6, and the British Academy for support to attend the PSA meeting in Cleveland.

References

Fisher, I. (1911), The Purchasing Power of Money. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hesse, M. (1966), Models and Analogies in Science. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, M. S. (forthcoming), “Learning from Models”, in Morgan, M. S. and Morrison, M. C. (eds.), Models as Mediators. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, M. (1992), “A Study in Theory Unification: The Case of Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23: 103–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar