A.N. Whitehead’s Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: Examples from Economics

The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is considered, following Whitehead, as a general difficulty in abstract conceptual thought. A connection to economic theory was made by Whitehead himself, although that was not his primary reason for investigating the fallacy. More recently Georgescu-Roegen has identified misplaced concreteness as the cardinal sin of standard economics. This article develops these points, and offers specific examples of this fallacy found in the works of several leading economists. In conclusion some rules of thumb for avoiding the fallacy of misplaced concreteness are offered.