Preface to the Italian edition of
Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics by Mark Buchanan, Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition (June 3, 2014)
Francesco Sylos Labini
This book, written by a physicist, discusses the ideas and concepts that are at the basis of that branch of economic theory generally called neoclassical – at the foundation of the neo-liberist doctrine – that appears to be culturally and politically dominating in these difficult times. It may seem strange that a physicist, whose object of study is usually represented by atoms, molecules, planets or galaxies, has anything relevant to say about the queen of social sciences: economics. Human beings, contrary to elementary particles or stars, are endowed with free will and, more important, the laws that rule the ways in which an individual makes his own choices end by which different individuals establish relations among them, developing a social behaviour, are unknown to us. Rather, it seems legitimate to doubt that such laws are well defined. In fact, we know the fundamental laws that rule, for instance, the interactions between electrical charges, or between the planets and the Sun: such laws, like, e.g., gravity, are universal and are the same at different points in space and at different times. Continue reading Preface to “Forecast. What extreme weather events can teach us about economics” Marc Buchanan