To map billions of daily transactions, economists need to distil the bustle of modern life into stark diagrams and abstracts signs. In order to research the realistic content of such representations, we dedicated a series of experiments, collectively referred to as Diagrams Concerning the Establishment of a Law, into the visual grammar of the economic sciences. Concretely, we investigated the expression of the basic unit of human agency - the point - and then considered the graphical organization that is required to accurately chart its limits. From there, we looked at how the identification of behavioural patterns is made possible by more complex line-drawing techniques. Finally, we considered the preferred geometric practices that are used to formulate laws based on discarding outliers and averaging unique occurrences observed in individual behaviour.
The four diagrams that form this study underscore the ubiquity of graphic signs used to map human action. They also point to the epistemological limits of generalising from the singular. Indeed, the inadequacies of these systems of representation produce an impression of excessive order, which we did not try to correct. We believe this jump to the level of abstraction - although at odds with today’s fashion of grounding everything in the referent of direct experience - is needed to better understand the methodology and epistemology of the economic sciences. We also believe that if people dedicated a little bit more time to methodology and epistemology, the world would be a better place to live.
Diagrams Concerning the Establishment of a Law (2009)