Signs of reality - reality of signs. Explorations of a pending revolution in political economy

Hardy Hanappi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper explores the interaction between the world of information processes in human society and the non-information dynamics, which the latter set out to understand. This broad topic is approached with a focus on evolutionary political economy: It turns out that progress in this scientific discipline seems to depend crucially on a methodological revolution reframing this above mentioned interplay. The paper consists of three parts. After a brief introduction, which sketches the position of the argument in the current epistemological discourse, part 1 sets out to describe the basic methodological ingredients used by evolutionary political economy to describe the ‘reality’ of socioeconomic dynamics. Part 2 jumps to the world of languages used and proposes a rather radical break with the received apparatus of analytical mathematics used so successfully in sciences studying non-living phenomena. The development of procedural simulation languages should substitute inadequate mathematical formalizations, some examples are provided. Part 3 then returns to ‘reality’ dynamics, but now incorporates the interaction with the information sphere in a small algorithmic model. This model – like the introduction - again makes visible the relationships to earlier research in the field. Instead of a conclusion – several, hopefully innovative ideas are provided in passing, throughout the paper - an epilogue is provided, which tries to indicate the implications of this methodological paper for political practice in face of the current global crisis.

Keywords: Scientific methods; evolutionary political economy; formal languages; ideology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B4 B51 B52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/31570/1/MPRA_paper_31570.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:31570

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().