Economic Models as Cultural Artifacts: A Philosophical Primer

As economics became a model-based science, ontological nature, cognitive status, and practical uses of economic models came under the spotlight of philosophers of economics and economic methodologists. However, what was strikingly missing was the interest in the cultural dimension of economic modeling. Some calls for thematizing “cultural framework” (Mäki), “enculturation” (Goldschmidt, Remmele), or “culture patterns” (Benton) of economic models have appeared in recent years, and this paper aims at addressing such calls. To this end, we start with the artifactual approach to economic models (Morgan, Knuuttila, Halsmayer), which cuts across the idealization–construction debate, and complement this approach with the cultural-semiotic component, drawing from the symbolic anthropology of Clifford Geertz. We thus come up with an interpretation of economic models as cultural artifacts, which enables us to address the insufficiently explored question of style in economic modeling using Nelson Goodman’s semiotic account of style.