"A new kind of representation – mathematical models – leads economic scientists to see in a particular way; and each different form of visualization, such as arithmetic, algebra or geometry, diagrams or even machines, leads to a focus on different aspects of the economic elements represented in their models. Portrayal and cognition are intimately linked and both these, in turn, to conception and perception." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"But there are deeper issues that stem from the synchronous development of matematics and modelling. New forms of expression within a discipline involve not just a change of method and the ways that scientists do their work, but also changes in the things that they express. As scientists imagine their world, and make images of that world in new forms, they also form new concepts to work and argue with. Modelling as a new way of visualizing the economy, and mathematics as a new language of expression, both prompt conceptual change. New ways of expressing economic ideas – models and mathematics – lead to new things being expressed. So the cognitive struggles these new processes of visualization entail are rewarded by the new conceptual developments that come from them." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Despite the ubiquity of modelling in modern economics, it is not easy to say how this way of doing science works. Scientific models are not self-evident things, and it is not obvious how such research objects are made, nor how a scientist reasons with them, nor to what purpose. These difficulties of definition and understanding are exhibited in a most concrete fashion in an example that may well be the first such economic model in the history of the field." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Economists do not start out by perceiving the world clearly and describing it in their model but by visualizing how the economic world might be and portraying that intuition in their model – imagining and imaging. In the process of such modelling, economists develop new concepts and so they – and we – come to perceive new things in the economic world. A new wayof looking at the familiar problems of exchange led to a new sense of what the phenomena entailed." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Mathematics provides the languages of most modern economic model-making, and we know that economics became mathematized at the same time as it became a modelling science [...]" (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Model-making – as we have already seen – is an activity of creating small worlds expressed in another medium. The economist represents his/her ideas about certain elements of the economy: the system as a whole, or people’s economic behaviour, that they want to investigate or understand into other forms: into bits of mathematics, diagrams, machines, and even – sometimes – strictly defined verbal portraits. The models have certain qualities – they are smaller-scale, and it is supposed, simpler, than the real world, made of quite different materials, and their sense of representation, imitation, or similarity might be quite opaque." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"[...] modelling as a style of reasoning in economics works as a method of enquiry comprising probing questions, manipulations to provide demonstrations that are both deductive and experimental, and informal inference arguments involving elements of narrative that offer explanatory or interpretative services." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Models are not easy objects either to define or, in general terms, describe, but those reproduced here, some of the most important models from the history of economics, exemplify the sort of things that count as models in economics: either real objects, or pen-and-paper objects that are diagrammatic, algebraic, or arithmetic in form. Despite their variations in form, these objects share recognisable characteristics: each depicts, renders, denotes, or in some way provides, some kind of representation of ideas about some aspects of the economy. Yet, and this is a very important point to stress, these representations are not just pictures." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Once accepted by a group of scientists, a style of reasoning comes to seem natural to them, so natural that they do not question it. They neither question its historical origins, nor the objectivity of the knowledge gained from using the method, nor do they appeal to any outside or higher level for its justification." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"Rules for reasoning with a model come from two distinct aspects of the model. First, when an economist reasons with any model, he or she must obey certain reasoning rules according to the kind of the stuff that the model is made from, or language it is written in, or the format it has. So, these rules could be those of geometry or algebra, of mechanics or hydraulics, etc. depending on the model. [....] Second, and in contrast, allowable manipulations of the model are also determined and constrained by the economics subject matter represented in the model." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"When metaphors are suggestive about the nature of economic objects and economic life, they provide the raw material from which to make substantive analogies, and analogies may be formed into models. By adopting a metaphor, economists can portray the workings of the economy in terms of some other already-formed and known world with which they are familiar, maybe a machine such as a mechanical balance or a physiological system such as the human body. In doing so, economists can be said to have ‘chosen’ the world of the model. And from imagining some aspect of the economy in terms of something else, economists are able to thinkanew about the economy from their analogical model." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
"When storytelling with a model succeeds in offering accounts that are both meaningful in their theoretical terms and plausible, and perhaps striking, in terms of the explanations these narratives offer for real-world events, economists are rather pleased with their efforts. Such a model may be understood by economists as one that has already offered suggestions about the way that the economic world might work, and might be used to generate additional insights. But what counts as meaningful and plausible both change over time." (Mary S Morgan, "The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think", 2012)
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