Date: Fri, 05 Jul 1996 13:23:00 -0600
From: Lisa Rogers <LROGERS-AT-deq.state.ut.us>
Subject: analogy, was economic field theory


Carrol:
>I think it is very important to
>knock down most (and perhaps all) analogies between physics and
>economics, politics, etc.

Zeynep: I vote YES.

Lisa: I tend to agree, re: most of such analogies that I've seen, but
I'm curious as to your reasoning for this position.  My argument is
that most of them are bad analogies, i.e. they are not very
parallels, or twisted in order to try to support some point, or
misleading or useless at least.  But some are not.  Some processes
have similar dynamics, and analogies may be useful in understanding. 

How about biological analogies?  Part of what's been called "list
ecology" here makes sense to me, but part of it doesn't at all, that
is, the analogy seemed pretty good in terms of the competition and
spread or death of ideas.  In fact, this sort of analysis has been
worked up pretty thoroughly among some anthropologists for several
years now, usually under the name of "cultural selection", and bits
of idea/info/culture are called memes, analogic to genes.

Not my cup of tea, but maybe not a bad analogy.

On July 3, 1996, Carrol Cox also wrote:
...I think there
are real differences to thresh out among real Marxists, which would
probably even become sharp and spark occasional flame wars--but
there is no way of pursuing those needed debates when the air is
filled with posturing and endlessly repeated polemical tautologies.

Lisa: I think we agree on this Carrol, in fact I was already agreeing
a few months ago.  "Posturing and endlessly repeated polemical
tautologies" are types of what I called "anti-discussion", they do
seem to put a damper on certain types of discussion for some people. 
Some of the discussion on M2 has been about Engels' _Dialectics of
Nature_, science and biologic/economic analogies, since you ask, but
you can always check out the archives through the Spoon web page.

Lisa


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