Methodologist-philosopher Tony Lawson's distinction between the theoretic and the ontic is insufficient to untangle what he regards as a set of complex confusions concerning economists' use of the idea of equilibrium. His problem is better approached through a historical excavation of "equilibrium" and the frameworks of thought in which the equilibrium idea is embedded. In particular, this requires serious attention to the history of mathematics, because economists' use of the idea of equilibrium was intertwined with their understanding of mathematics.
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E. Roy Weintraub (2005) studied this question.
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