Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T11:09:31.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What's Wrong with Invisible-Hand Explanations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

David L. Hull
David L. Hull*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
*
†Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An invisible hand seems to play an important role in science. In this paper I set out the general structure of invisible-hand explanations, counter some objections that have been raised to them, and detail the role that they play in science. The most important issue is the character of the mechanisms that are supposed to bring about invisible-hand effects.

Type
Symposium: The Use of Economic Concepts in Contemporary Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S117 - S126
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Toni Carey, Arthur Diamond, Peter Godfrey-Smith, D. Wade Hands, Alistair M. Macleod, Philip Mirowski, J. Tim O'Meara, George Reisch, and Miriam Solomon for reading and commenting on early drafts of this paper.

References

Bacon, F. ([1620] 1960), The New Organon and Related Writings, Anderson, F. H. (ed.). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.Google Scholar
Blau, J. R. (1978), “Sociometric Structure of a Scientific Discipline”, Research in Sociology of Knowledge, Sciences and Art 1: 191–206.Google Scholar
Collins, H. M. (1985), Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Frank, R. H. (1985), Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, R. H. and Cook, P. (1995), The Winner-Take-All Society. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, S. (1994), “Toward a Philosophy of Science Accounting: A Critical Rendering of Instrumental Rationality”, Science in Context 7: 591–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hamilton, A., Madison, J., and Jay, J. ([1788] 1818), The Federalist Papers, on the New Constitution. Washington, DC: Jacob Gideon.Google Scholar
Hardin, G. (1977), The Limits of Altruism: An Ecologist's View of Survival. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hirshleifer, J. (1977), “Economics from a Biological Viewpoint”, Journal of Law and Economics 20: 1–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. L. (1988), Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226360492.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kevles, D. J. (1996), “The Assault on David Baltimore”, The New Yorker, May 27: 94–109.Google Scholar
Medawar, P. B. (1972), The Hope of Progress. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Medawar, P. B. (1977), “Fear and DNA”, The New York Review of Books, October 27: 15–20.Google Scholar
Mirowski, P. (1994), “A Visible Hand in the Marketplace of Ideas: Precision-Measurement as Arbitrage”, Science in Context 7: 563–589.10.1017/S0269889700001824CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Parascandola, M. (1995), “Philosophy in the Laboratory: The Debate over Evidence for E. J. Steele's Lamarckian Hypothesis”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26: 469–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettit, P. (1996), “Functional Explanation and Virtual Selection”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47: 291–302.10.1093/bjps/47.2.291CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quillian, M. R. (1994), “A Content-Independent Explanation of Science's Effectiveness”, Philosophy of Science 61: 429–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawling, A. (1994), “The AIDS Virus Dispute: Awarding Priority for the Discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)”, Science, Technology & Human Values 19:342–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. K. (1983), “The Profit Motive”, Lloyds Bank Review, January 147: 1–20.Google Scholar
Smith, A. ([1776] 1993), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. (Abridged with Commentary and Notes by L. Dickey). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Solomon, M. (1995), “Multivariate Models of Scientific Change”, in Hull, D. L., Forbes, M., and Burian, R. M. (eds.), PSA 1994, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 287–297.Google Scholar
Solomon, M. (1996), “Information and the Ethics of Information Control in Science”, Perspectives on Science 4: 195–206.Google Scholar
Ullmann-Margalit, E. (1978), “Invisible-Hand Explanations”, Synthese 39: 263–292.10.1007/BF00485077CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weintraub, E. R., and Mirowski, P. (1994), “The Pure and the Applied: Bourbakism Comes to Mathematical Economics”, Science in Context 7: 245–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ylikoski, P. (1995), “The Invisible Hand and Science”, Science Studies 8: 32–43.Google Scholar
Ziman, J. M. (1994), Prometheus Bound: Science in a Dynamic Steady State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511585067CrossRefGoogle Scholar