Professor Mary S Morgan

History, philosophy and sociology of economics and statistics.

Models, measurements, experiments, observations and facts in history and philosophy of science.

Current work on case studies and narratives; and on ‘performativity’: the ways in which economic ideas and technologies reshape economies in the world.

Current and Recent Research Projects

• ‘Narratives in Science’ for a special issue (forthcoming) of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science           
•  British Academy Wolfson Research Professorship project: Re-Thinking Case Studies Across the Social Sciences 
• Leverhulme Trust / ESRC project: "How Well Do Facts Travel?" (a group project of the Department of Economic History)
• Observation in Science: joint work with the University of Amsterdam's History and Philosophy of Economics Research Group and the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin. 

 

• Room SAR 6.09 (Sardinia House) 
• Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 7081 
• m.morgan@lse.ac.uk
• CV (PDF)

Current Teaching

• Currently on leave (2015-6)

 

 Selected Recent Publications and Working Papers

(See CV for full listing, and Research Gate for further access)

Recent Books 

• The World in the Model. (CUP, 2012) Chapter 1: "Modelling as a Method of Enquiry" 
• How Well Do Facts Travel?  (CUP, 2011) edited with W. Peter Howlett.  Chapter 1:  “Travelling Facts” 

 

Recent Papers/Chapters 

• “Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors: Drawing New Ontologies” (Forthcoming 2016) in Cultures Without Culturalism in the Making of Scientific Knowledge ed K. Chemla and E. Fox Keller (Duke University Press) [Department of Economic History, Working Paper No 228, Dec 2015] (Link to LSE Working Paper here)

• “What if? Models, Fact and Fiction in Economics” (2014) Keynes Lecture Read October 2013, posted December 2014. Journal of the British Academy, 2, 231-68.
•  “Re-Situating Knowledge: Generic Strategies and Case Studies” (2014) Philosophy of Science, 80, 1012-24. 
• “Nature’s Experiments and Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences” (2013) Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 43:3, 341-57.  
• “Case Studies: One Observation or Many? Justification or Discovery?” (2012) Philosophy of Science, 79:5, 667-77. 
• “Models and Modelling in Economics” (2012, SSRN 2009]) With Tarja Knuuttila in U. Mäki (ed) Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics (a volume of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, general editors: Dov Gabbay, Paul Thargard and John Woods), pp 49-86.
• “Seeking Parts, Looking for Wholes” (2011) Histories of Scientific Observation, edited L. J. Daston and E. Lunbeck, University of Chicago Press pp 303-325.  
• “Business Models as Models” (2010) with Charles Baden-Fuller, Long Range Planning, 43.2, 156-71.  
• “‘Voice’ and the Facts and Observations of Experience” (2010) In  W.J. Gonzales (ed)  New Methodological Perspectives on Observation and Experiment (pp 51-69). A Coruña: Netbiblio. (Previously, Working Paper No 31, How Well Do Facts Travel?, Department of Economic History, LSE).  
• “'On a Mission' with Mutable Mobiles” 2008, Working Paper 34, The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do 'Facts' Travel? Department of Economic History, LSE
• "Models" (2008) in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, eds: S.N. Durlauf and L.E. Blume (Palgrave Macmillan), online. 
• “An Analytical History of Measuring Practices: The Case of Velocities of Money” (2007) in Measurement in Economics: A Handbook, ed M. Boumans (Elsevier), pp 105-132. [Earlier version online: “Measuring Instruments in Economics and the Velocity of Money”,  Working Paper 13, How Well Do Facts Travel?, Department of Economic History, LSE.]  
• “The Curious Case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Model Situation? Exemplary Narrative?” (2007) in A. Creager, M. Norton Wise, and E. Lunbeck Science Without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives, (Duke University Press) pp 157-85. 
• “Economic Man as Model Man: Ideal Types, Idealization and Caricatures” (2006) Journal of the History of Economic Thought  28:1, March, 1-27.
• “Experiments Versus Models: New Phenomena, Inference and Surprise” (2005) Journal of Economic Methodology, 12:2, 317-29.  PDF SUPPLIED
• “Simulation: The Birth of a Technology to Create “Evidence” in Economics” (2004)  Revue d’Histoire des Sciences, 57:2, 341-77.   PDF SUPPLIED
• “Secrets Hidden by Two-Dimensionality: The Economy as a Hydraulic Machine” (2004) with Marcel Boumans in Models: The Third Dimension of Science eds: S. de Chadarevian and N. Hopwood, Stanford University Press) pp 369-401. 
• “Imagination and Imaging in Economic Model-building” (2004) Philosophy of Science, 71:5, 753-66.
• “Economics” (2003) in The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences, editors: T. Porter and D. Ross (Cambridge University Press, pp 275-305).  
• “Experiments Without Material Intervention: Model Experiments, Virtual Experiments and Virtually Experiments” (2003) in The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation ed H. Radder, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp 261-35. 
• “Models, Stories and the Economic World” (2001) Journal of Economic Methodology 8:3, 361-84.