Philip Mirowski

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Philip Edward Mirowski (born August 21, 1951 in Jackson , Michigan ) is an American historian and economist. Mirowski is best known for his work on the history of neoclassical economics , whose origins in physics he worked out. His more recent work deals with the history of neoliberalism .

Career, research and teaching

Mirowski graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1973 . He then moved to the University of Michigan , where he did his Master of Arts in 1976, before earning his Ph.D. in 1979. graduated.

In 1978 Mirowski began his service as an assistant professor at Santa Clara University , before moving to Tufts University in 1981 . After a short stay at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984/85 , he returned to Tufts University as an Associate Professor . In 1990 he followed a call from the University of Notre Dame and took over the Carl Koch Chair for Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science .

Mirowski achieved particular fame with his work More heat than light - economics as social physics, physics as nature's economics , first published in 1989 , in which he presented the interaction between modern economic theory and physical knowledge. He justified the success of the theories in particular by Adam Smith , Karl Marx , François Quesnay and David Ricardo, with work as the central factor and starting point for value determination, with the agreement with the knowledge of scientific processes and the rational teachings of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and René Descartes . In the following years he published various publications in which he expanded this line of thought in more detail and applied it to other economists. The focus of the investigations is in particular the exchange of energy and utility as a yardstick. In his Machine Dreams - Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science , published in 2001 , Mirowski focused on the work of John von Neumann , using his game and machine theories to examine the influence of the military and cyborgs on neoclassical economists.

He summarized the Wikipedia encyclopedia as a typical product of neoliberalism . The view that the objective truth would sooner or later prevail on the free “market of ideas” is an expression of the neoliberal zeitgeist. Likewise, despite the non-commercial claim, which would be particularly attractive for opponents of the system ( those inclined to rage against the machine ), there would be a commodification of knowledge. Findings that were previously created with great effort by authors and scientists would be brought into formats by unpaid volunteers that would be torn from the original context, freely available and thus made generally marketable. Wikipedia would not (yet) market this knowledge itself, but it would complement itself perfectly with other advertising-financed Internet providers such as Google and enable the commercial use of further developed products.

Publications

  • as editor: Natural Images in Economic Thought: Markets Read in Tooth and Claw. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-521-44321-0 .
  • More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics; Physics as Nature's Economics. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0-521-42689-8 .
  • Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-521-77526-4 .
  • Science Bought and Sold: Essays in the Economy of Science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2002, ISBN 0-226-53857-5 .
  • The Effortless Economy of Science? Duke University Press, Durham 2004, ISBN 0-8223-3322-8 .
  • as editor, with Dieter Plehwe : The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03318-4 .
  • Science Mart. Privatizing American Science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-04646-7 .
  • Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown . Verso, London / New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-78168-079-7 .
    • Translation: Undead live longer. Why neoliberalism is even stronger after the crisis . Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95757-087-1 .

literature

  • S. Abu Turab Rizvi: Philip Mirowski as a Historian of Economic Thought . In: Steven G. Medema, Warren J. Samuels (Eds.): Historians of Economics and Economic Thought: The Construction of Disciplinary Memory . Routledge, London / New York 2001, pp. 209–222.
  • Who's Who in America. 66th Edition, Volume 2: M – Z. Marquis Who's Who, Berkeley Heights 2011, ISBN 978-0-8379-7032-5 (Volume 2), ISBN 978-0-8379-7035-6 (Complete Works ), ISSN  0083-9396 , p. 3083.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The road from Mont Pèlerin. The making of the neoliberal thought collective. Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 417 ff.
  2. ^ The road from Mont Pèlerin. The making of the neoliberal thought collective. Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 424 f.
personal data
SURNAME Mirowski, Philip
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mirowski, Philip Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economic historian and cultural critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Jackson , Michigan