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Tony Brewer wrote:  
> Formalism: economic theory (not applied economics, not macroeconomics)  
> surely did develop an obsession with formal proofs which sets it apart  
> from most other subjects. There are predecessors, from Cournot on, but  
> the big impetus surely came from the literature on existence of  
> equilibrium which Roy himself chronicled. My impression is that this  
> movement is past its peak. 
 
The existence of equilibrium literature has many strands, only one of  
which makes connections to ideas of mathematical formalism: the  
contributions of Debreu -- as opposed to those of Arrow, McKenzie,  
Nikkaido et al. -- come from a perpective which seems to link with  
this discussion's idea of formalism. Mirowski and I have tried to  
write about this in our 1994  Science in Context paper on Debreu 
and Bourbaki, posted at   
(http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/Preprints/debreu.bourbaki.html) 
 
Economists have identified "formalism" with axiomatization, increased  
rigor, abstraction, mathematization, deductive argument, and all  
sorts of other ideas. For instance, Woo's book on the subject says  
that he uses "formalism" to mean all of the above, and more too. 
The point I want to make is that these ideas are fluid, and   
local and contingent in their use: "rigor" meant something entirely  
different in 1890 from what it did in 1950, and also from what it  
means today, in the mathematics community. When one  
thus says "economics in the late 20th century is more rigorous than it 
was in 1900", just what exactly is one asserting if the concept of  
rigor is not either stable, or comparable between the periods?  
 
That is why I insist that the idea of a "formalist revolution" is  
an historical question, not a quibble over current word usage.  
 
 
E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics 
Director, Center for Social and Historical Studies of Science 
Duke University, Box 90097 
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0097 
 
Phone and voicemail: (919) 660-1838  
Fax: (919) 684-8974 
E-mail: [log in to unmask] 
URL: http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html 
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