DocumentsDate added
Andrés Lazzarini, Revisiting the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies: A Historical and Analyticalhot!
03/31/2011
Hits: 251
In the first part the author addresses the basic analytical and methodological issues underlying the neoclassical theory, with special emphasis on how the problem of a measure of capital arises within the marginalist theory of value and distribution. The second part surveys the most relevant contributions to the Cambridge debates in the light of the salient results of ‘reswitching’ and ‘reverse capital deepening’, and shows how the implications of these results, which touch the principle of factor substitution, brought about different strategies pursued by neoclassical scholars to overcome these theoretical problems.
The book concludes that since the results of this debate touch the foundations of the theory, and hence are of a general character, it is hard to accept that the contemporary versions of the theory are free of capital problems, while at the same time the Cambridge controversies are absent in the current literature used for training economics students.
The book should therefore be useful to the undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to scholars devoted to the History of Economic Analysis.
Un anno al museo 2009
Ad appena tre anni dalla sua apertura il Museo della Tecnica Elettrica dell’Università di Pavia è un giovane Museo che si sta affermando. Le sue attività, e quelle del Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca per la Storia della Tecnica Elettrica che è ospitato nel Museo, sono in crescita. Per questo si è pensato di documentarle annualmente in un Rapporto asciutto e agile, affidato soprattutto alle strade della rete informatica oggi forse più frequentate degli scaffali delle biblioteche.
Nel 2009 Brian Bowers, già al Science Museum di Londra, ha raccontato, in modo magistrale e affascinante, la storia dell’illuminazione e di quella elettrica, in particolare. La lettura o rilettura della sua lezione fa certamente gustare maggiormente la ricchezza dei contenuti, anche se non può rendere l’emozione delle scintillanti dimostrazioni che l’hanno accompagnata, quando è stata tenuta.
Senza aver alcuna pretesa di competere con le più grandi istituzioni museali, con le quali peraltro il Museo di Pavia si onora di collaborare, viene licenziato questo modesto strumento di comunicazione on line con lo scopo di far giungere le notizie annuali del Museo anzitutto alla cerchia degli amici del Museo stesso e poi a tutti i visitatori passati e futuri, effettivi e virtuali, e infine a tutti quanti sono interessati alla cultura tecnico scientifica e ai Musei dove tale cultura non solo è conservata, ma è continuamente rielaborata e offerta in modo rigoroso, vivace e accattivante.
The Holonic Revolution. Holons, Holarchies and Holonic Networks. The Ghost in the Production Machinehot!
01/07/2010
Hits: 620
A minor conceptual revolution has been under way for less than forty years now, beginning in 1967 with the publication of Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine – a phantasmagorical book in terms of the breath and variety of its content – which formally introduced the concepts of holon and holarchy (the hierarchical ordering of holons). Koestler’s idea is clear and simple: in observing the Universe surrounding us (at the physical and biological level and in the real or formal sense) we must take into account the whole/part relationship between observed “entities”.
In other words, we must not only consider atoms, molecules, cells, individuals, systems, words or concepts as autonomous and independent units, but we must always be aware that each of these units is at the same time a whole – composed of smaller parts – and part of a larger whole.
In fact, they are holons. The entire machine of life and of the Universe itself evolves toward ever more complex states, as if a ghost were operating the machine.
The concepts of holon and holarchy have since been used, especially in recent times, by a number of writers in a variety of disciplines and contexts, and these concepts are rapidly spreading to all sectors of research. In particular these concept are more and more frequently found in the literature of physics, biology, organizational studies, management science, business administration and entrepreneurship, production and supply chain systems.
Connected to these ideas are those of holonic networks, holonic and virtual enterprises, virtual organizations, agile manufacturing networks, holonic manufacturing systems, fractal enterprise and bionic manufacturing.