The Metaphor of the Machine

Stefano Fiori ()
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Stefano Fiori: University of Torino

Chapter Chapter 3 in Machines, Bodies and Invisible Hands, 2021, pp 31-63 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The metaphor of the machine, and the metaphor of the clock in particular, was used in the seventeenth century to interpret both nature and the hierarchical features of the political body. In addition, another metaphor—the balance—was used in the same period and in the early decades of the eighteenth century to conceptualize equilibrium in economic and political spheres. Mandeville, among others, seemed to reuse the ideas embodied in it. When Smith introduced the metaphor of the machine, the novelty was that this image ceased to represent static order, because—he maintained—machines evolve. Moreover, he showed that the beauty of order embodied in the machine could trigger behaviors which produce unintended outcomes. Despite these characteristics, this metaphor was not fully able to illustrate how economic order emerges.

Keywords: Metaphor of the machine; Balance; Mandeville; Beauty of order; Economic system as machine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-85206-1_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85206-1_3

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