----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]