ABSTRACT
The introduction and development of neoclassical economics was in the last decade studied from the point of view of the widespread incorporation of metaphors from physics. As Mirowski (1989) argued thoroughly, the metaphors drawn from nineteenth-century energetics and based on the First Law of Thermodynamics were decisive for the formal extension of the general equilibrium models and for the acceptance of the heuristic relevance of the maximisation principle, as well as all its paraphernalia of concepts and postulates. Yet, the following combination of neoclassical economics and the new generation of econometric models and research, which provided the decisive step towards the contemporarily dominant form of economic theorising, were not studied in the same depth, although many scholars provided valuable insights on the topic.
