ABSTRACT
The neoclassical atomistic homo economicus is a conceptual Frankenstein. The idea was fabricated in the late nineteenth century to serve the dream of constructing models of the economic universe in the image of Newtonian mechanics. Such models treat economic agents as if they were particles obeying mechanical laws whose behavior could, in principle, be described by a solvable system of equations. Determinate models of economic behavior, even when not reified as a belief in a determinate economic universe, require “economic agents” possessing properties formally corresponding to those of Newton’s particles. Above all, economic subjects must be declared atomic. Application of atomism to the economic realm means treating human desires and proclivities as fundamental data, which, like the masses of physical bodies in classical mechanics, are not affected by the relations being modeled.
