Dated Analogies
While translating Irving Fisher's Debt-deflation Theory of Great Depressions to Portuguese, a work in which I plunged without even knowing it was from the 30's, it seemed to me most of his analogies (boat capsizing, pendulum) were all from physics, with a few exception from medicine. It sounded dated, and it actually was (although it seems to be in vogue right now, because Keynesian theory don't seem to explain the present crisis). Curious about physics analogies for economic phenomena, I discovered Fisher had been a physics student before focusing on economics. The 30's were in love with physics, and physics was the main focus of analogies in many fields for maybe 40 years after that, depending on how hype was the field. Now biology, both evolutionary and ecology, seem to be the most hype fields to use analogies from. Still, things like complexity, self-organizing criticalities and things like that bring us some physics into the analogy zeitgeist--although it might sound a bit newagy.
