Machine dreams : economics becomes a cyborg science / Philip Mirowski.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 577-643) and index.

1. Cyborg Agonistes. Rooms with a View. Where the Cyborgs Are. The Natural Sciences and the History of Economics. Anatomy of a Cyborg. Attack of the Cyborgs. The New Automaton Theatre -- 2. Some Cyborg Genealogies; or, How the Demon Got Its Bots. The Little Engines That Could've. Adventures of a Red-Hot Demon. Demons Who Came in from the Code: Cybernetics. The Devil That Made Us Do It. The Advent of Complexity -- 3. John von Neumann and the Cyborg Incursion into Economics. Economics at One Remove. Phase One: Purity. Phase Two: Impurity. Phase Three: Worldliness -- 4. The Military, the Scientists, and the Revised Rules of the Game. What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? Ruddled and Bushwhacked: The Cyborg Character of Science Mobilization in World War II. Operations Research: Blipkrieg. The Ballad of Hotelling and Schultz. SRG, RAND, Rad Lab -- 5. Do Cyborgs Dream of Efficient Markets? From Red Vienna to Computopia. The Goals of Cowles, and Red Afterglows: Getting in Line with the Program. Every Man His Own Stat Package: Cowles Unrepentant, Unrecursive, and Unrecusant. On the Impossibility of a Democratic Computer -- 6. The Empire Strikes Back. Previews of Cunning Abstractions. It's a World Eat World Dog: Game Theory at RAND. The High Cost of Information in Postwar Neoclassical Theory. Rigor Mortis in the First Casualty of War. Does the Rational Actor Compute? -- 7. Core Wars. Inhuman, All Too Inhuman. Herbert Simon: Simulacra versus Automata. Showdown at the OR Corral. Send in the Clones -- 8. Machines Who Think versus Machines That Sell. Where Is the Computer Taking Us? Five Alternative Scenarios for the Future of Computational Economics. The Hayek Hypothesis and Experimental Economics. Gode and Sunder Go Roboshopping. Contingency, Irony, and Computation. App. 8.1. Double Auction and Sealed Bid Encoded onto Automata -- App. 8.2. Sealed-Bid Auction with Accumulation Rule -- Envoi.

"This is the first cross-over book into the history of science written by an historian of economics. It shows how 'history of technology' can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. The analysis combines Cold War history with the history of postwar economics in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. It links the literature on 'cyborg' to economics, an element missing in literature to date. The treatment further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents, arguing that neoclassical economics has participated in the deconstruction of the integral 'self'. Finally, it argues for 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."--Publisher description.

Machine converted from AACR2 source record.