经济进化的基础

这本书是一项雄心勃勃的学术事业，旨在为经济学建立一个自然主义的基础，其中包含了物理学、生物学、社会科学和哲学的惊人广博的知识。读者将会发现，制度研究、(社会)神经科学、网络理论、生态经济学、生物文化二元论进化等领域涌现的方法和见解都被令人信服地置于一个统一的大框架中。它是按照哈耶克的传统写成的。我特别向年轻读者推荐这本书，在这个扩大知识和思想交流能力的时代，他们渴望超越狭隘的特定学科。”
- 美国斯坦福大学Masahiko Aoki

'Carsten Herrmann-Pillath的新书是深入应用自然哲学对经济学的深入应用，这为经济分析提出了一个完全新的框架。它提供了对人类经济活动与自然之间的相互作用的公平洞察，并概述了对长期降低争议的令人信服的解决方案。对于每个对经济学的哲学支撑为科学的人来说，必须阅读。“
- Max Planck经济学研究所，德国乌尔里希维特

“大局”经济学哲学漂流到一个沉闷的CUL-DE-SAC中，因为它痴迷于伪造性和合理性。在这本书中，Carsten Herrmann-Pillath通过在更大的形而上学框架，进化动态和信息理论中定位经济学来推动田野回到开放的高速公路上。这是大规模的，雄心勃勃的综合我们期望的思想，我们预计会致力于物理和生物学。为什么经济学不值得更少？但当然，这种智力挂毯必须等待一个异常忠诚的学者的外观，具有特殊的耐心和古怪的独立性，从速度的快速退货，表征学术生活。在Herrmann-Pillath的人中，这个学者出现了。没有人在整个和最富有的环境中审查经济学应该在这本书中错过他的艺术家表演。
- 南非和佐治亚州立大学，开普敦大学唐罗斯

“Herrmann-Pillath的工作试图抵达最近蓬勃发展的其他话语的经济学视角，即热力学，进化生物学和符号学，旨在通过经济活动和问题的环境化环境。这标志着这项工作作为自然哲学的当代例子，现在正在复兴的门口。整体观点是人类经济活动是地球表面生态的一个方面，将其视为通过技术演进中所示的分布式心态介导的不断发展的物理系统。如人类的务实，知识被认为是“物理”，与私人的务实。因此，发现期望，价格和信贷的社会含义植根于能量流动。该工作从Hegel和C.S.Peirce和Hayek，Veblen和Georgescu-Roegen的直接指导造成了它的基础。作者产生了一个能量的经济增长理论，由Odum的最大功率原则为指导。鉴于先前章节的考试，在一个极其强大的当代框架内，经济话语本身就在最后一章中重新制作了。
- Binghamton University，Sany，Saly，Saly

'在“剧院剧院”中的奥斯卡赢得绩效。难以知道哪个赞美：卡尔斯顿海尔曼队 - 柱的谦卑或他的野心。他说他的书“不是一个伟大的知识分子壮举”，因为他追求了把“别人的想法”放在一起的“谦逊的任务”。当他终于到达经济学时，他试图“尽可能简单”，并在“本科水平的基础上，以”本科水平“在”本科“的方式中想象经济学。另一方面，他的野心的规模是从第一原则重新思考经济学的基础，同时持有当代科学与经典哲学之间的运行对话。当然，他太谦虚了，因为基础是一项重大成就，但他谦虚的观点是让它成为一个强大的论文：这本书不是关于他的偏好或偏见;这是一种“旨在建立关于现实的真实主张”的“科学方法”。That is much harder to achieve than grand theories or “complicated mathematics,” because it amounts to a new modern synthesis of the field – an achievement on a par with Julian Huxley’s, whose own modern synthesis of evolutionary theories in the 1940s allowed for the explosive growth of the biosciences over the next decades. The structure of the book is simple enough, providing a framework for the “naturalistic turn” in economics. Starting from material existence, causation and evolution, Herrmann-Pillath takes us through four fundamental concepts – individuals, networks, institutions and technology – before coming finally to the “realm of economics proper,” i.e. markets. However, Herrmann-Pillath believes that the “foundations of economics cannot be found within economics” but only in dialogue with other sciences, or what he calls the “theatre of consilience”. It’s a theatre in which various characters come and go, where dialogue ebbs and flows, conflicts arise and are resolved, and where individual actions can be seen as concepts as, leading to higher levels of meaning as the plot unfolds. The magic of theatre, of course, is that the point of intelligibility, where the characters, actions and narrative resolve into meaningfulness, is projected out of the drama itself, into the spectator. That’s you, dear reader. So it is with economics as a discipline. Economics is a player in a much larger performance about what constitutes knowledge, and how we know that. It is also a player in the economy it seeks to explain. To understand why money, firms, growth, prices, markets and other staples of economic thought emerge and function the way they do, it is necessary situate the analysis beyond economics (and the economy), and to engage with developments across the human, evolutionary and complexity sciences. This is what Herrmann-Pillath does, analyzing a breathtaking range of illuminating and sometimes challenging work along the way. We are treated to new ideas about the externalized brain, the evolution of knowledge in the Earth System (i.e. not just among humans), the role of signs and performativity in these processes, as well as that of “energetic transformations.” But Herrmann-Pillath is not satisfied with the “modest” task of bringing the best of modern scientific thought to bear on economic concepts and performances; he really does harbor a deeper purpose. The clue is in his apparently quixotic desire to hang on to philosophical insights associated with pre-evolutionary thinkers like Aristotle and Hegel, and his apparently eccentric desire to place the semiotic philosophy of C.S. Pierce at center stage. But the patient observer will see that he is not seeking to change the facts by imposing idealist notions on them after the event. Instead, he is arguing for a change in the way we perform ourselves in the face of these facts. He is looking for a modern-day equivalent of Confucius or Socrates: one who can imagine values and beliefs that “define the human species in a new way.” For those who have eyes to see, as the drama unfolds, it may be that we have found such a figure in Carsten Herrmann-Pillath himself, modesty, ambition and all. This is “Cultural Science” as it should be done.’
- John Hartley，Curtin University，澳大利亚和卡迪夫大学英国