Talk:Newtonian time in economics

Very confusing
User:N2E linked the Austrian School article to this article. I'm still trying to understand why that link was inserted, but while I'm over here I thought I'd ask "what is a continuous unit"?

I understand about discrete units. They're like atoms ... we can chop something up until we're down to the units, or elements, and then we can't chop those up any more finely. But the continuum isn't like that. So the phrase "continuous units" is an oxymoron. Why does this article refer to something that cannot exist? DavidCBryant 12:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Good questions David. Let me give both your questions a shot, and then add a third.
 * 1) I linked to the Austrian School of Economics because O&R claim "This book began as an attempt to survey and restate the basic features of "Austrian" economic theory" (pp. 1) and I was surprised not to find a WP article on the book itself, and a relatively poor article on Newtonian Time. Thus, I thought the See also link might get some Austrian's over here to improve this article.  Also, I recall reading somewhere that Karen Vaughn, a fairly well-known Austrian Economist was quoted in the 1990's as saying something to the effect that "Since 1985, all Austrian economics has been the economics of time and ignorance."
 * 2) I agree with you that that statement is confusing. I don't think that the whole article on NT is very well written.  I have a working concept of what O&R mean by the shortcomings of the concept of time that is used by the neoclassicist economists, and they call that concept NT.  But I haven't read the entire book and don't want to undertake trying to fix this article.  But it would be good if someone did.
 * 3) On the sentence in the article: "Gerald O'Driscoll and Mario Rizzo claimed Newtonian time has little relevance for economics in their book, The Economics of Time and Ignorance. Neo-classical economics implictly embrace this framing of time and, in doing so, downplay essential facets of a dynamic economic system."  I do not agree with the first half of the quote.  The second sentence is okay.  I think they are simply saying that  neoclassic modeling, which uses a concept here called NT, is not sufficiently robust to be able to model endogenous change very well.  Neolclassical econ, with it's emphasis on equilibrium at a given set of exogenous conditions, can look for a different equilibrium when the exogenous conditions change, but has no mechanism withIN their economic models to endogenously explain the change, why it happens, how far it will go, etc.  They clearly believe that Austrian econ theory can help here.  I have not read very much of O&R, so don't want to try to fix this until I understand more.  Possibly later this term, if I have the time. N2e 04:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

As it stands the article reads as complete nonsense from a physics or mathematics point of view. Please fix or remove. 88.112.24.109 (talk) 00:53, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Orphan Tag
I removed the orphan tag since the article is now linked by a couple of articles. I'm not sure how many articles make up a Wikipedia orphan, so if two is not enough, feel free to add the tag back in. N2e 04:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Newtonian time outside of economics
I did several searches on Google scholar and, while I found 35 uses of NT in economics and business literature, there were 175 in the social sciences and humanities, and nearly 500 in physics, astronomy and planetary science.

Net: there is probably a lot more that should be said in this wikipedia article about newtonian time. It is clear that the article, as of today, is focused on just the use of the term within Economics. Can other editors help on this? N2e 04:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. Economics is certainly not the first thing that should be discussed when talking about Newtonian time! Horia 14:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought Newtonian time means time in daily life, as opposed to other forms of time (quantized, warped, fingered, etc.) that are theoretical. So wouldn't all economics be about Newtonian time without having to mention it? (Unless it's about something like the price of quark-matter. )

I found a mirror of this article before it was dumped, and it contained a link to an essay by Mike Hammel, who is in my opinion an anti-realist conspiracy nut. Indeed it was while trying to get the dirt on Mike Hammel that I came across this page. 198.228.198.122 (talk) 09:01, 24 July 2011 (UTC) Collin237

Post-AFD
I think we can all agree that the article, as it stands now, is quite without merit. Since AFD is a discussion of the notability of the topic, not the content of the article, and I propose that we redirect it to Time, leaving open the possibility that someone can re-write it. --GrapedApe (talk) 01:26, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree, but redirect to the "Physical definition" section, with a commented note in the Time article to indicate that the redirect should be fixed if that section title is ever changed. --Danger (talk) 16:03, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to merge and redirect to Austrian Economics as the topic seems to be more related to economics that than to any physical notion of Time. It is true that the article is confusing and incoherent, but that does actually reflect quite well the confusion and incoherence of the main reference. An even better redirect would be to the authors of the book, but neither of them seems to be wikipedia-notable. Dingo1729 (talk) 16:37, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem with that proposal is that the contents is fringe-of-the-fringe. The review in an Austrian School journal says that the "real time" notion of O'Driscoll and Rizzo is basically gibberish. So it's wp:undue even there. Tijfo098 (talk) 17:03, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I hear what you are saying. How about a redirect to Austrian Economics without a merge? It wouldn't give someone searching on this term much information, but it would give them a little more than a redirect to Time. Dingo1729 (talk) 18:01, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it matters if it's left for now. I think it's almost an orphan—I've just deleted this article from the 'See also' section of 'Absolute time and space' and far as I can see, there are no links from article space apart from the 'See also' section of Austrian economics ('What links here' claims otherwise but I can't find any links in the articles it lists so I can only think it's some temporary effect arising from this article's recent removal from Template:Time topics). How about listing the redirect from Newtonian time at WP:Redirects for deletion and leaving it at that? Anyone who still manages to find this article via Search or chooses to follow the link from Austrian economics may know enough about the topic to help improve it. Qwfp (talk) 19:36, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Given that the article seems to be based on a single book, and commentary on that book, should the article just be moved to "The Economics of Time and Ignorance (book)"? C RETOG 8(t/c) 22:08, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * That would be an improvement except that I think the book is not notable. Maybe we should move it and then nominate for deletion again. Dingo1729 (talk) 23:12, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Moving-then-AFD sounds like cheating. I don't have an alternative suggestion yet. C RETOG 8(t/c) 23:54, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's an alternative: How about moving it to Time in economics? That could survey various issues: time inconsistency, sequential game, time series, intertemporal choice, etc. This could become a small part of that article, and then probably be removed from that article as WP:UNDUE unless it somehow gets polished into a useful part of the article. C RETOG 8(t/c) 03:26, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have to agree that my suggestion would rather be cheating. Dingo1729 (talk) 05:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I redirected to Austrian School, since it relates the the Austrian School of thought more than the general concept of time.--GrapedApe (talk) 02:23, 29 March 2011 (UTC)