01469pab a2200133 454500008004000000100002200040245010500062260000900167300001400176362000800190520109300198650001401291773003001305180718b2003   xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aMackenzie, Donald  aAn equation and its worlds: bricolage, exemplars, disunity and performativity in financial economics  c2003  ap.831-68.  aDec  aThis paper describes and analyses the history of the fundamental equation of modern financial economics: the Black-Scholes (or Black-Scholes-Merton) option pricing equation. In that history, several themes of potentially general importance are revealed. First, the key mathematical work was not rule-following but bricolage, creative tinkering. Second, it was, however, bricolage guided by the goal of finding a solution to the problem of option pricing analogous to existing exemplary solutions, notably the Capital Asset Pricing Model, which had successfully been applied to stock prices. Third, the central strands of work on option pricing, although all recognizably `orthodox' economics, were not unitary. There was significant theoretical disagreement amongst the pioneers of option pricing theory; this disagreement, paradoxically, turns out to be a strength of the theory. Fourth, option pricing theory has been performative. Rather than simply describing a pre-existing empirical state of affairs, it altered the world, in general in a way that made itself more true. Reproduced.  aEconomics  aSocial Studies of Science