In hmolscience, Ching-Yao Hsieh (1917-2001) was a Chinese-born American economist noted for his 1991 book Economics, Philosophy, and Physics, co-written with American economist Meng-Hua Ye—who of note completed his PhD with a dissertation on “Application of Brownian Motion to Economic Models of Optimal Stopping” in 1984 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—their book written for students of economics interested in knowing the philosophical underpinnings and scientific foundations of contemporary economic models.
The book has sections on romanticism and science, thermodynamics and economics, chaos theory and philosophy, Newtonian physics and economics, relativity and economics, among other two cultures subjects.
Hsieh and Ye classify Austrian-born astrophysicist Erich Jantsch as Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine’s “most famous disciple and interpreter.” [1]
Econophysics | Newtonian based
Hsieh and Ye state that only two books prior to them have related physics, in particular Newtonian mechanics, to economics, namely: American physical economics historian Philip Mirowski’s 1988 Against Mechanism, especially part one, and Austrian-born American physicist Fritjof Capra’s 1983 The Turning Point, especially chapter seven. [1]
Education
Hsieh completed his undergraduate education at St. John’s University, Shanghai, where he taught history, after which he worked at the Central Bank of China, then migrated to America in 1954. He then completed a master’s and doctorate degree in economics at George Washington University, after he began teaching economics there in 1961, and was professor emeritus in 1991. [2] In 1997, the “Ching-Yao Hsieh Prize” was established, by multiple donors, in Hsieh’s honor, at George Washington University, awarded annually, one to an undergraduate and one to a graduate student in the economics department.
Quotes
The following are quotes from the book:
“God if reason, the Bible is Newtonian physics; and the prophet is Voltaire.”
— Anon (c.1800), credited as a "wit in the past"
“The philosophy of any period is always largely interwoven with the science of the period, so that any fundamental change in science must produce reactions in philosophy.”
— James Jeans (1943), Physics and Philosophy [3]
References
1. Hsieh, Ching-Yao, and Ye, Meng-Hua. (1991). Economics, Philosophy, and Physics (disciple, pg. 127). M.E. Sharpe.
2. Ching-Yao Hsieh (obituary) – WashingtonPost.com.
3. Jeans, James. (1943). Physics and Philosophy (pg. 2). University of Michigan Press, 1966.
4. (a) Hsieh, Ching-Yao, and Ye, Meng-Hua. (1991). Economics, Philosophy, and Physics (two books, pg. xxxvi). M.E. Sharpe.
(b) Capra, Fritjof. (1982). The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (§7: The Impasse of Economics, pgs. 188-233). Simon & Schuster.
(c) Mirowski, Philip. (1988). Against Mechanism: How to Protect Economics from Science (pg. 1). Rowman & Littlefield.
External links
● Hsieh, Ching-Yao (1917-) – WorldCat Identities.
