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189959

(2013) Hayek and behavioral economics, Dordrecht, Springer.

Hayek's sensory order, Gestalt neuroeconomics, and quantum psychophysics

Taiki Takahashi , Susumu Egashira

pp. 177-196

In recent decades — due mainly to technological advances in molecular biological and neuroimaging tools such as the utilization of transgenic animals in behavioral neuroscience (Capecchi, 1994) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (Ogawa et al, 1990) in human cognitive neuroscience — the amount of knowledge in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience has rapidly increased. The explosive progress in neuroscience is an instance of theoretical physicist Freeman J. Dyson's "tooldriven" scientific revolutions (Dyson, 1997; Dyson, 1999), in contrast to the "concept-driven" revolutions analyzed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Tool-driven revolutions arise in relation to the invention of new tools (or instruments) designed to investigate nature and discover new facts that challenge our previous concepts, while Kuhnian concept-driven revolutions provide new concepts with which to understand nature — to "explain old things in new ways." The analysis of the role of Hayek's thought — as presented in The Sensory Order — in the oncoming concept-driven revolution in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience is one of the main objectives of the present article.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1057/9781137278159_8

Full citation:

Takahashi, T. , Egashira, S. (2013)., Hayek's sensory order, Gestalt neuroeconomics, and quantum psychophysics, in R. Frantz & R. Leeson (eds.), Hayek and behavioral economics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 177-196.

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