On March 18th 2025, I delivered a presentation on my new book to the International Political Economy Research Group in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. The talk was entitled, 'From Edinburgh to Chicago, Maxwell to Stigler: Reconstructing the Pre-History of Contemporary Economics Imperialism', and it was based on some of the key analytical insights from my recent book, False Prophets of Economics ImperialismLink opens in a new window. A recording was made of the presentation, and I can pass this on if you ask me for it.

Abstract: The epistemic value of hypothetical mathematical models lies in the thought experiments they permit. The Edinburgh alumnus James Clerk Maxwell has acquired legendary status in the world of physics for the way in which he used Lagrangian functions to unify the explanations of electricity, magnetism and light under the same system of fundamental equations. This occurred long before experiments in the 1880s showed that there was causal content to match the explanatory content. The Chicago alumnus George Stigler was the first of many economists since the 1980s to make an analogous claim that every aspect of social life could be explained in the same way using price-theoretical equations that were already commonplace within economics. Stigler’s programme of scientific unification, though, has fared markedly less well than Maxwell’s. It has faced challenge and contestation at every turn, and the scepticism of the social scientific community shows no signs of abating, however much the advocates of economics imperialism turn up the volume. My multidimensional pre-history of the contemporary economics imperialism phenomenon shows why the original claims were never as strong as they were made out to be. There is still epistemic merit to be found in even the most abstract of mathematical market models, because it forces us to place that particular way of thinking into dialogue with others that require models to display greater affinity to the world as it might actually be experienced. Maxwell benefited from others posthumously closing the gap between the two through successful observation-based experimentation, but those who have followed Stigler have muddied the waters by acting as if the solution to a system of equations can substitute directly for context-sensitive empirical findings. The book’s excursions into the history of science, the history of scientific modelling, the history of mathematics and the history of metamathematics reveal the shaky foundations on which this supposed equivalence is based. Moreover, detailed study of the history of economic thought shows that those economists whose work is most synonymous with deepening the mathematical features of abstract market models almost always knew as much. The pre-history of economics imperialism was full of moments when mathematical pioneers in economics stopped themselves from following the path that later generations of economics imperialists chose to follow.ink opensLink opens in a new window