On 3/17/10 11:06 AM, Jim Devine wrote: > Max, that link doesn't work. > > 2010/3/17 Max Sawicky<[email protected]>: > >> http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.2688v2.pdf >>
works fine here ... see also Econophysics and economics: Sister disciplines? Econophysics is an interdisciplinary field that applies various models and concepts associated with statistical physics to economic and financial phenomena. At first glance, it might be thought that economics and econophysics share the same kind of analysis of economic reality. I argue that economics and econophysics are very different. Although the former is an a priori social science, the latter has its methodological roots in the physical sciences. Econophysics is a hybrid discipline whose name results from the contraction of “economics” and “physics.” Econophysics is not just a new fashion in the set of existing economic theories. It is a new way of thinking about economic and financial systems based on the universality of statistical properties and complexity. Econophysicists use the tools and concepts of statistical physics and complexity science4 to describe socioeconomic systems (markets, companies, and national economies) as complex systems. Econophysics is a new discipline that has generated several methodological debates. More and more papers on econophysics have been published in journals devoted to physics and statistical mechanics. Several meetings dedicated to this topic are regularly organized, and new Ph.D. programs in econophysics have recently appeared. Are econophysics and economics complementary fields or totally separated disciplines? In this paper I argue that econophysics is not a subfield of of economics, and these two fields are separate disciplines. [snip] In conclusion, the methodological gap between econophysicists and economists is huge. The main differences between these two disciplines can summarized as follows: (1) Different ways of doing science (empiricism versus an a priori approach), (2) different use of the notion of model (data driven models versus a priori models), (3) different way of characterizing the future (uncertainty-oriented versus risk oriented), (4) differences concerning the potential occurrence of extreme events (instability versus stability), (5) different kind of reductionism (interactive versus atomistic), (6) different epistemological foundations (macrolevel versus microlevel), and (7) different kinds of causality (heteropathic versus homopathic causality). Christophe Schinckus CIRST (Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie), University of Québec at Montréal (UQAM), Canada in American Journal of Physics, Vol 78, No. 4, April 2010 Les _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
