•  6
    Insider apology for microeconomic theorising?
    with Maarten Janssen and Tarja Knuuttila
    Journal of Economic Methodology 1-12. forthcoming.
    This comment on 'Economic theories and their Dueling interpretations' questions the descriptive adequacy of the ‘sociology of economics' proposed by Gilboa, Postlewaite, Samuelson, and Schmeidler (GPSS) (2022). We ask whether economists still perceive the role of microeconomic theory as central as do GPSS. In particular, is present-day economics unified by the principles of maximising, subject to constraints and equilibrium analysis? We argue that this is not the case. GPSS’ appeal to the interp…Read more
  •  17
    Narrative Science: Reasoning, Representing and Knowing Since 1800 (edited book)
    with Kim M. Hajek
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    Narrative Science examines the use of narrative in scientific research over the last two centuries. It brings together an international group of scholars who have engaged in intense collaboration to find and develop crucial cases of narrative in science. Motivated and coordinated by the Narrative Science project, funded by the European Research Council, this volume offers integrated and insightful essays examining cases that run the gamut from geology to psychology, chemistry, physics, botany, m…Read more
  •  12
    Do you see it this way? Visualising as a tool of sense-making
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 101 (C): 30-39. 2023.
  •  8
    Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 1999.
    Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the…Read more
  •  3
    Models and stories in Hadron physics
    with Margaret Morrison
    In Mary S. Morgan & Margaret Morrison (eds.), Models as Mediators, . pp. 326-346. 1999.
  •  142
    Philosophers of science studying scientific practice often consider it a methodological requirement that their conceptualization of "model" closely connects with the understanding and use of models by practicing scientists. Occasionally, this connection has been explicitly made (Hutten 1954, Suppes 1961, Morgan and Morrison 1999, Bailer-Jones 2002, Lehtinen and Kuorikoski 2007, Kuorikoski 2007, Morgan 2012a). These studies have been dominated by a focus on the—relatively similar forms of—mathema…Read more
  •  27
    ‘If p? Then What?’ Thinking within, with, and from cases
    History of the Human Sciences 33 (3-4): 198-217. 2020.
    The provocative paper by John Forrester ‘If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases’ opened up the question of case thinking as a separate mode of reasoning in the sciences. Case-based reasoning is certainly endemic across a number of sciences, but it has looked different according to where it has been found. This article investigates this mode of science – namely thinking in cases – by questioning the different interpretations of ‘If p?’ and exploring the different interpretative responses of what foll…Read more
  •  5
    Book Review (review)
    Economics and Philosophy 7 (2): 308-315. 1991.
  •  220
    Nature’s Experiments and Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (3): 341-357. 2013.
    This article explores the characteristics of research sites that scientists have called “natural experiments” to understand and develop usable distinctions for the social sciences between “Nature’s or Society’s experiments” and “natural experiments.” In this analysis, natural experiments emerge as the retro-fitting by social scientists of events that have happened in the social world into the traditional forms of field or randomized trial experiments. By contrast, “Society’s experiments” figure …Read more
  •  47
    How well do facts travel?: the dissemination of reliable knowledge (edited book)
    with Peter Howlett
    Cambridge University Press. 2010.
    Facts often acquire a life of their own; the stories in this book explain why.
  •  1
    Models are experiments, experiments are models
    Journal of Economic Methodology 12 317-329. 2005.
  •  31
    Exemplification and the use-values of cases and case studies
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 78 (C): 5-13. 2019.
  •  48
    Narrative ordering and explanation
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 62 86-97. 2017.
  •  43
    Narrative science and narrative knowing. Introduction to special issue on narrative science
    with M. Norton Wise
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 62 1-5. 2017.
  •  42
    Resituating Knowledge: Generic Strategies and Case Studies
    Philosophy of Science 81 (5): 1012-1024. 2014.
    This paper addresses the problem of how scientific knowledge, which is always locally generated, becomes accepted in other sites. The analysis suggests that there are a small number of strategies that enable scientists to resituate knowledge and that these strategies are generic: they are not restricted to specific disciplines or modes of doing science but rather are found in a variety of different forms across the sciences
  •  121
    Case Studies: One Observation or Many? Justification or Discovery?
    Philosophy of Science 79 (5): 667-677. 2012.
    Critiques of case studies as an epistemic genre usually focus on the domain of justification and hinge on comparisons with statistics and laboratory experiments. In this domain, case studies can be defended by the notion of “infirming”: they use many different bits of evidence, each of which may independently “infirm” the account. Yet their efficacy may be more powerful in the domain of discovery, in which these same different bits of evi- dence must be fully integrated to create an explanatory …Read more
  •  71
    A long-standing tradition presents economic activity in terms of the flow of fluids. This metaphor lies behind a small but influential practice of hydraulic modelling in economics. Yet turning the metaphor into a three-dimensional hydraulic model of the economic system entails making numerous and detailed commitments about the analogy between hydraulics and the economy. The most famous 3-D model in economics is probably the Phillips machine, the central object of this paper.
  •  36
    Moving forward on models
    Journal of Economic Methodology 22 (2): 254-258. 2015.
  •  16
    The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think
    Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 2012.
    During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. This book will be …Read more