Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 05:01:53 -0600
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: Economic field theory



Hi Rahul, Hans Ehrbar speaking here.  I am suspicious of your brief
description of statistical mechanics, which I am repeating here:

> The statistical mechanics of Boltzmann is based on a strictly
> deterministic model. It arises from considering the situation of an
> observer's imperfect information about a completely deterministic
> system. In order to formulate such a model mathematically, you need
> a deterministic microdynamics, and a quantity which can characterize
> the essential "alikeness" of an ensemble of microscopically
> different systems, as in physics one does with, say, temperature
> (canonical ensemble). Then you need to show that the results you get
> are independent of the details of how you pick your ensemble.


Specifically, I have doubts about three points:

(1)  The interpretation of statistical mechanics as a modeling of the
observer's imperfect information is not the only interpretation of it.


(2) Statistical mechanics is based on some ad-hockery.  Its intention
has apparently been to be the bridge between thermodynamics and
mechanics, but a reduction of thermodynamics to mechanics has never
been accomplished successfully, and one should also not expect that it
is possible, since mechanics is reversible in time and thermodynamics
is not.

(3) Chaos theory has received major impulses from some promising
progress in the search for what has to be added to reversible
mechanics in order to get irreversible thermodynamics.  It has also
not been entirely successful, but it is something that needs to be
taken seriously.


I am moving on the slippery slope of challenging you on your home
turf, of which I only have impressionistic knowledge, because your
misrepresentation of statistical mechanics seems to be symptomatic of
your monism, which is a basic logical error permeating everything you
say: you deny the stratification of the world, i.e., you deny that
causal laws can arise on many different levels, and you are therefore
necessarily blind to some of the methodological necessities in the
higher order sciences, not only thermodynamics but---more importantly
here---the social sciences.


What I just wrote is not meant as an attack on you.  I very much
appreciate the role you have been playing as a watchdog against
bullshit.  It is a somewhat desperate attempt to make you see some
weaknesses in your own position.


By the way, the Bhaskar list is just beginning a reading of Bhaskar's
"Realist Theory of Science", which argues that positivism, i.e., the
mixture of empiricism and monism which nowadays passes as science, is
wrong even in the natural sciences.  I urge you, and others who are
interested, to take part in that discussion.  Simply send the message

subscribe bhaskar

to majordomo-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU

You won't need to buy the book; Bhaskar's text will be posted to the
list in many short installments.

Hans Ehrbar.



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