Make way for the physicists! Economics is finally becoming an enlightened science, say new books by Mark Buchanan and James Owen Weatherall
SOMETHING is stirring amid the swamps of the dismal science. It speaks of brass beads and rice piles, of power laws and positive feedback, of phase changes, chaos and complexity. Resembling an actual science, it might come to have some bearing on the real world and help reduce future financial catastrophes. That is the main message of Mark Buchanan’s new book, Forecast.
This new science is battling to escape the dominant theory of neoclassical economics. That “almost…
