Throughout this book, we see economic modelers distancing themselves from any explanatory power or realist intentions of their artifacts. Chapter 5 takes a closer look at such utterings as a specific kind of model talk that accompanied modeling as a practice. Frequently, such talk related to the power of mathematics as a language, centering on the greater “virility” of transparent and unambiguous mathematical methods compared to their verbal counterparts and predecessors. In contrast, I focus on instances in which economists grappled with their tricky artifacts and their messy practices. The talk surrounding Solow’s model turned it into a didactic device, a prototype for larger-scale planning models, an imagery of a world that macroeconomic management was capable of creating, and a part of a toolbox that equipped economists as “little thinkers” with technically sound and rationally appropriate knowledge. While model talk in the first place emphasized the epistemic and political tentativeness of models, Solow’s model turned into the epitome of what graduates called the “MIT style of modeling.”

The 21st century has not been good to the science of economics. Economic crises such as the 2007–2008 mortgage crisis and subsequent recession were neither predicted by economists nor perceived to be the result of economic planning based on neoclassical models. This chapter combines insights from the history of economic anthropology and sociology to develop a theory of economic behavior that returns economic practice to its social and cultural contexts. It is less a critique of the science of economics than a synthesis of economic and social theory that speaks to the changes outlined in the previous chapters and questions of value raised in part two of this book.