The Limits to Certainty

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiii

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2. Introduction

   • Orio Giarini, Walter R. Stahel

   Pages 1-9

3. The New Battleground for Risk Taking :The Service Economy

   • Orio Giarini, Walter R. Stahel

   Pages 11-128

4. Facing Social Uncertainty: Towards a New Social Policy in the Service Economy

   • Orio Giarini, Walter R. Stahel

   Pages 129-183

5. Producing the Wealth of Nations; the Risk Takers and the Supply- Side of the Economy. The Dynamics of Disequilibrium

   • Orio Giarini, Walter R. Stahel

   Pages 185-241

6. At The Roots of Uncertainty

   • Orio Giarini, Walter R. Stahel

   Pages 243-264

7. Back Matter

   Pages 265-271

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I consider it a privilege to have been invited to write a preface for "The Limits to Certainty". It is however paradoxical that a theo­ retical physicist be asked to write about a monograph dealing mainly with service economics. Notwithstanding, I am delighted to do so. Indeed, it is striking that two so widely different fields like physics and social science, and more especially economics, can interact in such a constructive way. There is no question here of reductionism. Nobody claims to be able to reduce social scien­ ces to physics, nor to use patterns of social interaction in order to formulate new laws for atoms. What is at stake here is more im­ portant than reduction; the age-old separation between the so-cal­ led "hard" and "soft sciences" is breaking down. This separation has a long history. First, one should recall the influence of Newton's achievement on the formulation of scienti­ fic goals. This influence led to the formulation of equilibrium mo­ dels for supply/demand adjustment. As was noticed by Walter Weisskopf: "the Newtonian paradigm underlying classical and non-classical economics interpreted the economy according to the patterns developed in classical physics and mechanics, in analogy to the planetary system, to a machine or clockwork: a closed auto­ nomous system ruled by endogenous factors of a highly selective nature, self-regulating and moving to a determinate, predictable point of equilibrium" (The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (1984), Vol. 9, no. 33, pp. 335-360).

• Distribution
• Economic Growth
• economy
• foundation
• growth
• social policy
• welfare

• PROGRES, Programme of Research on the Economics of Services, Geneva, Switzerland

  Orio Giarini, Walter R. Stahel

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