Further Reading: Imported Error

Essential

Mirowski, P. (1989). More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics. Cambridge University Press. The definitive account of economics' borrowing from physics. Mirowski documents in exhaustive detail how 19th-century economists imported physical concepts — often misunderstanding them in the process. Dense but essential. (Tier 1)

Hofstadter, D. & Sander, E. (2013). Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. Basic Books. A cognitive science perspective on analogical reasoning — when it illuminates and when it misleads. Relevant to the deep/surface similarity distinction. (Tier 1)

The Computer Metaphor in Cognitive Science

Epstein, R. (2016). "The Empty Brain." Aeon. The provocative argument that cognitive science cannot think about the brain without the computer metaphor — and that this inability constrains the field. (Tier 1)

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind. MIT Press. The foundational work challenging the computational metaphor with the embodied cognition alternative. (Tier 1)

The Factory Model in Education

Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Harvard University Press. A historical account of how the factory model became embedded in American public education and why reform efforts have repeatedly failed to dislodge it. (Tier 1)

Cross-Domain Borrowing: Theory

Research on analogical reasoning in science has been conducted by philosophers of science including Mary Hesse (Models and Analogies in Science, 1966) and cognitive scientists including Dedre Gentner (structure-mapping theory). (Tier 2)

Gentner, D. (1983). "Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy." Cognitive Science, 7(2), 155–170. The formal cognitive science treatment of when analogies work and when they fail. The source of the deep/surface similarity distinction. (Tier 1)

For Instructors

The "strip test" exercise works well as a classroom activity. Ask students to describe a phenomenon in their field without using any vocabulary borrowed from other fields. The struggle — and the revelations that emerge — demonstrates the invisible constraint of imported concepts more effectively than any lecture.

The Part I summary table (seven entry mechanisms) makes an excellent review framework for the Part I exam. Ask students to apply all seven mechanisms to a single case — the dietary fat hypothesis works well because it exhibits all seven.