What is essential is invisible to the eye. From neoclassical to cognitive perspective on production theory.

This article is to be considered within the extensive contemporary debate between the neoclassical economic approach and the current heterodox economic approaches on the theory of production. Historically, this debate has been represented by the Cambridge-Cambridge controversy beginning with the problems of the heterogeneous nature of the capital factor and leading one to question a dogma that characterizes the neoclassical economic theory: the Cobb-Douglas production function. In 1974 and in 1980 Anwar Shaikh completely debunked this dogma by rendering visible to the scientific world the income accounting identity underlying Cobb-Douglas production function and thereby leading him, in 2012, to urge to rethink microeconomics. One of the current heterodox economic approaches which has addressed this urge, is the strand of studies that heads cognitive economics. According to cognitive economics, what is essential is the cognitive process since it is the origin and cause that determines those phenomena that economic science intends to analyse. In this article, we adopt the cognitive perspective in order to make analytically explicit the cognitive production function which describes the cognitive process, invisible to the eye, but that lies at the root of the production of knowledge required for developing and optimizing the production process itself. To achieve this aim, we rely on the joint anlysis of John Foster’s economic thought, which is related to evolutionary economics, and on Max Boisot’s economic studies on information economics, which should be seen as connected with the recent strand of studies of cognitive economics.