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Oikonomia: On Metaphor, Science, and Natural Order

In: More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics

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  • Jeremy Walker

    (Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney)

Abstract

This chapter offers an approach to the question of how economics and ecology, descendants of the pre-modern discourse of oikonomia, became incommensurable sciences. Durkheim, Mauss, Douglas, and Mirowski suggest that a given culture’s justification of the social order is reflected in and reproduced by its account of the natural order, this informs a discussion of the sociology of knowledge. Turning to philosophers of science (Kuhn, Duhem, Quine, Hesse) we consider the role of metaphor in constituting scientific concepts: from the positivists, who asserts that ‘laws of nature’ are timeless truths beyond language, to Nietzsche, who alerts us to the ubiquity of metaphor and the proximity of all knowledge to its ‘faded coinage’. In conclusion, it is proposed that machine metaphors are constitutive of the cosmology of thermoindustrial society.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Walker, 2020. "Oikonomia: On Metaphor, Science, and Natural Order," Springer Books, in: More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics, edition 1, chapter 0, pages 33-52, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-15-3936-7_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-3936-7_2
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