19 - The kinds of order in society

Summary

Introduction: from Hayek to Aristotle

Philip Mirowski has shown us that neoclassical economic theory has incorporated some very dubious analogies to nineteenth-century energy physics; in addition, we have seen that economic theory of various schools has employed many analogies to biology. Indeed, the rhetoric of economics is highly promiscuous in its liaisons with the various natural sciences; my favorite example of this promiscuity is from the “Preface to the First German Edition” of Capital, where Marx makes a wanton metaphorical appeal to physics, chemistry, and biology in one breadth: He proposes to “lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society” and to prove “that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change.”

The chapters in this volume have shown that few metaphorical appeals to nature will bear critical scrutiny and that all analogies will break down if pushed far enough. I hope to advance this deconstructive project by showing that there is an important logical difference between metaphor and analogy – a difference that makes metaphors obscure in a way that analogies are not. But my chief concern is not with demolition but with construction, for I believe that the ubiquitous appeals to nature in social theory suggest some important truths: If, as ecologists insist, human society is only a part of the whole of nature and if, as hermeneutics insists, all understanding moves in a circle from part to whole, then it follows that our knowledge of nature will play an important role in our knowledge of society, just as our knowledge of society will play a role in our knowledge of nature.