CfP – Session on visualization at the 14th ESHET Conference (March 25-28, 2010)

Kandinsky, Composition X, 1939

For the 14th conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought in Amsterdam, I am submitting a session on the use of visual representation in economics, with the following argument:

The last two decades have witnessed a growing literature on visualization in the history of science following the publication of Lynch and Woolgar’s Representation in Scientific Practice (1990) – see for instance a recent focus section in Isis (March 2006). Despite previous attempts to draw the attention of historians of economics and insightful published papers on the subject – e.g. a ECHE conference in 2002 and a related mini-symposium in JHET in 2003), the use of visual representation in economics remains largely misunderstood. Graphical methods, for instance, are still regarded as a mere subdivision of mathematical analysis, whereas Klein (1995), Cook (2005) and Giraud (2007) have demonstrated that they have been considered distinct from mathematics since the early days of neoclassical economics. More generally, though anyone would concede that graphs, charts, tables, pictures and illustrations are part of the economist’s workaday tools, few efforts have been engaged to understand precisely how they operate within the larger models and theoretical frameworks in which they are used. Failure to recognize the role of visualization in economics is related to the fact that historians of the field tend to focus on the development of theory rather than on the practices in which theorization is entrenched, favoring a foundational approach which undermines cultural specificities. The most recent contributions to the history of science, indeed, have pointed out that the role of visualization in science is best understood within the framework of visual culture – see for instance Luc Pauwels (ed.), Visual Cultures of Science (2006).In this session, we would like to follow this literature by bringing together a set of papers which explore the use of visual representation in connection with peculiar cultures, whether disciplinary or operating at a larger level – the birth of mass-media in the US, for instance. Contributions will focus on the invention of visual devices in relation with specific practices, on the interaction between economists and artists or on how certain visual methods are affected when audiences are different from those they were originally intended for. They need not be focused on theoretical economics but also on the use of visual representation by economic propagandists, state administrations or practitioners operating on markets.

I already have two papers for the session, including one by Loic Charles and myself on the visual display of economic information in the US during the interwar period (we draw on the FSA pictorial project and on Otto Neurath’s Isotype method). I would be happy to include one or two other papers. These may not be strictly papers on the history of economics but also papers on the history of management or general history articles which cover economic themes (for instance, economic history, history of measurement and the larger history of social sciences). Beyond the ESHET conference, this session may help launch the discussion on this neglected aspect of scientific practice and to help increase multidisciplinary work on the subject in the near future. If you have an abstract to submit, you can do this directly to me (yann.giraud[at]u-cergy.fr, replace [at] with @), I will re-submit the session as a whole before the papers are individually submitted through the ESHET website. You can also contact me if you have already submitted a paper which you think may fit this session in particular.

HISRECO 2010 – Call For Papers

Fourth Conference on the History of Recent Economics

3-5 June 2010

École normale supérieure de Cachan

The Second World War and its aftermath marked a major stage in the establishment of economics as one of the dominant discourses in contemporary societies. The spread of economic ideas into many areas of social life invites mutually profitable engagements between historians of economics and historians of other social sciences. It also presents great potential for those working on the history of economics to broaden their audience beyond those that they have traditionally addressed.

The past decade has been witness to a surging interest in the history of economics post-WWII. This new scholarship has made good use of newly available source-materials, rehearsed new methodologies for the study of the past and looked across disciplinary boundaries for insights. The first three HISRECO conferences offered wide-ranging samples of this work. For the fourth consecutive year, we are inviting submissions of papers on the post-WWII era. Papers that deal with the period leading up to this may be considered, but only if they shed significant light on subsequent developments. Though all proposals will be carefully considered, our preference is for papers that place post-war economics in a broader context, whether this is parallel developments in other social sciences, politics, culture or economic challenges. To this end, we solicit proposals from scholars trained in history, economics, sociology, or any field that may yield insights. Proposals from doctoral students and junior researchers are actively encouraged.

If you are interested in participating, please submit a proposal containing roughly 500 words and indicating clearly the original contribution of the paper (if you have a draft of the paper, we would be happy to see that as well). The deadline for the submission of paper proposals is 30 September 2009. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent by 15 November 2009 and completed papers will be due on 1 March 2010 so that we can provide feedback and then give discussants time to prepare worthwhile comments.

The organizing committee consists of Roger Backhouse (University of Birmingham), Philippe Fontaine (École normale supérieure de Cachan and Institut universitaire de France), Yann Giraud (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) and Tiago Mata (University of Amsterdam).

Proposals should be sent electronically to philippe.fontaine [at] ens-cachan.fr.
For further information about the conference please contact Philippe Fontaine.

Debunking criticisms of science studies

Tilting at Imaginary Windmills: A Comment on Tyfield

Since the beginning of the Science Wars, a few articles have been published criticizing science studies (or SSK for Social Studies of Knowledge or Sociology of Scientific Knowledge) on the basis that they provide relativistic accounts of science which deny the very existence of truth and the possibility of judging the world out there. Generally, those criticisms are written by “traditional” philosophers of science who are searching for an ontology of scientific practice, one which would help demarcate science and non-science, or by normative – Mertonian – sociologists of science, who would like to distinguish between good and bad scientific practices or criticize the growing interaction between science and the market. SSK, on the other hand, providse a non-judgmental account of science, which explains scientific practice as entrenched in specific communities and cultures. In other words, it does not seek to distinguish between what is true and what is false, but to explain the emergence of truth as a social/cultural process. SSK does not deny the existence of truth, as critiques assert, only  it contextualizes it. It is perfectly correct to say that SSK does not provide a relevant framework to judge the world “out there”, because it is just not its purpose. If we want to explain how science is made, how can we simultaneously provide a theoretical framework to demarcate good from bad practices? Obviously, the ideas and goals of those who write science studies are divergent – and hardly reconciliable – with those of normative sociologists and philosophers of science. It is not surprising, indeed, that such critical pieces are frequently published. The best discussion that has been published on these controversies is Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s Belief and Resistance (on another blog, I have reviewed her last book, Scandalous Knowledge, which deals with related issues).

E. Roy Weintraub has been the first historian of economics to fully grasp the extent to which the framework offered by science studies would help provide a more accurate History of Economics. For this reason, it has been an honor for me to co-write with him a short piece commenting on a critical paper by David Tyfield. This comment has been published by the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics and can be downloaded here.

Paul Samuelson and Visual Representation

The Changing Place of Visual Representation in Economics: Paul Samuelson between Principle and Strategy, 1941-1955

In this paper, I show that Paul Samuelson (1915-), renowned as one of the main advocates of the mathematization of economics, has also contributed to the change of the place of visual representation in the discipline. In his early works (e.g. Foundations of Economic Analysis published in 1947), he rejected diagrammatic analysis as a relevant tool of theorizing but used diagrams extensively, both as a pedagogic tool in his introductory textbook Economics (1948) and as a way of clarifying his theory of public expenditure (1954-5). I show that Samuelson’s reluctance to use diagrams in his early works can be explained by his training at Chicago and Harvard and his rejecting Marshall’s economics, whereas his adoption of visual language in Economics was a product of the peculiar context affecting American mass-education after WWII. A methodological debate which opposed him to Kenneth Boulding in 1948 led him to reconsider the place of visual representation in order to clarify conceptual controversies during subsequent debates on mathematical economics. Therefore, it can be said that the prominent place of visual language in the diffusion of economic ideas was stabilized in the mid-1950s, as mathematical language became the prevailing tool of economic theorizing. From this, I conclude that the idea that algebra simply upstaged geometry in the making of economic analysis must be qualified.

This paper is being published by the Journal of the History of Economic Thought and is currently available on SSRN.