This is a history of how physics has drawn some inspiration from economics and how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value. The author traces the development of the energy concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect on the invention and promulgation of neoclassical economics, the modern orthodox theory.

List of figures; List of tables; Epigraph; Acknowledgments; Dedication; 1. The fearful spheres of Pascal and Parmenides; 2. Everything an economist needs to know about physics but was probably afraid to ask: the history of the energy concept; 3. Body, motions and value; 4. Science and substance theories of value in political economy to 1870; 5. Neoclassical economics: an irresistible field of force meets an immovable object; 6. The corruption of the field theory of value, and the retrogression to substance theories of value: neoclassical production theory; 7. The ironies of physics envy; 8. Universal history is the story of different intonations given to a handful of metaphors.