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In reply to Hoover, I think the real question is what are the founding 
paradigms of what started in the 1870s (Edgeworth, Jevons, Menger, Walras), 
what Veblen (as I have read) first called "neoclassical" in 1900, and what 
now (still) goes professionally in the United States as "economics." This 
is not a question of awe over mathematics or "modern sciences" (any more 
than over music or color or the unconscious). I have enormous respect for 
the OED. I agree in dictionaries and encyclopedias  especially the first 
Palgrave) there are many clues. I agree the paradigmatic influences 
(conscious or not) are several, and probably even from the beginning mixed, 
blended. But those guys actually say they're doing physics, and if you read 
and figure what they're doing, it is a kind of metaphorical physics. Here 
Mirowski rules. 
But engineering is not quite the same matter. Someone suggested earlier we 
were here spinning two threads. I agree, (1) economics and scientific 
metaphors, (2) economics and engineering. What about a third, economics and 
accounting? 
 
John Womack  
 
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